
Qass-i. 
Book__ 



A '■ 



4 



SI 



J 



-5 

V 



■wmy ... S* ^j& 

S '~JB 



A COURSE OF 



ENGLISH LITERATUEE. 



BY 



JAMES HANNAY, 



AUTHOR OF " SATIRE AND SATIRISTS," " ESSAVS FROM THE QUARTERLY, 1 
ETC., ETC. 




LONDON : 

TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 

1866. 

[The Right of Translation is reserved.] 



1 .tt* 




LONDON 
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, W1UTEFRIARS. 



>k 



i 



<o 



a 



a 






THE MEMOEY OF ONE 



WHO WAS WITH ME WHEN THIS LITTLE BOOK WAS WRITTEN, 



IT IS SOLEMNLY AND TENDERLY 



Jane, 1866. 



PEEFACE. 

The present book is based upon a series of 
papers contributed some years ago to a popular 
periodical. It is intended for the use, not of 
schools only, but of that large and increasing- 
class of young men in our great cities, who 
desire to be guided to the acquirement of a 
respectable knowledge of our national literature. 
I believe that there is sufficient novelty in its 
plan and execution to entitle it to a fair trial; 
and I am not without hopes that it may help 
to keep alive that interest in the great masters 
of the past, which cannot perish without injury 
to more than the culture merely of any nation. 

JAMES HANNAY. 

London, 1866. 



CONTENTS. 



I. — The Introduction. — Literary History . 

II.— English History and English Historians 

III.— English Historians — continued 

IV. — Aids to the Study of English History . 

V.— On the Study of History and other Branches 
of Literature, according to epochs . 

VI. — The Division into Epochs 
VII. — The Division into Epochs — resumed 
VIII. — Biography 

IX. — Poetry — The Poetic Drama 

X. — Poetry ........ 

XL— Poetry ....... 

XII. — Fiction, and Light Literature generally 
XIII. — Philosophy.— Bacon— Hobbes . 
XIV. — Philosophy — concluded .... 

• XV. — Contemporary Writers .... 



PAGE 
1 

24 

48 
70 

92 
114 
134 
155 
174 
193 
213 
233 
258 
279 
302 



A COUKSE OF ENGLISH 
LITEBATUEE. 



i. 

THE INTRODUCTION.— LITERARY 
HISTORY. 




UR purpose in the present volume 
is to conduct the reader through a 
course of study fitted to make him 
acquainted in a large and liberal sense with the 
literature of his native country. We assume in 
him only an ordinary English education ; we 
require from him just the degree of attention 
which a natural love of reading may be expected 
to inspire ; we presuppose of him access to a 
tolerable library, such as is now happily to be 
obtained in all our chief towns. We shall en- 



2 A Course of English Literature. 

deavour to be as perspicuous and practical as may- 
be, and to bear in mind always that the resources 
of many of our readers in point of time and 
opportunity are limited. Accordingly, in recom- 
mending particular books, we shall take care to 
indicate always when such books are rare, or 
when, from any circumstance, the study of them 
is attended with peculiar difficulties. 

But first for a few introductory remarks on 
reading in general, and on the line which we 
propose to take on this special occasion. 

The first question which may be expected to 
present itself to a youthful student as his eye 
wanders round attractive but bewildering shelves- 
ful of books, is, "Where shall I begin? shall 
my reading be desultory or shall it be systematic ? " 
We have assumed that it is to be English — as is 
natural and national ; and, moreover, because by 
general consent the literature of England is one 
of the noblest in the world. A great range opens 
before him : what shall be the method of his 
explorations ? 

On this much-disputed point, we shall 



Literary History. 3 

help ourselves to a conclusion "by an illustra- 
tion. 

A literature is like a country. Let us set 
about seeing and knowing it, as if we were travel- 
lers on a tour — travelling for amusement, but not 
for amusement only; and here is the key-note. 
We are not to read merely for pleasure, but we 
have a right to consult pleasure too ; and, indeed, 
in the matter of learning, where there is no 
pleasure there is little profit. Besides, me, just 
now, are not writing to those whose " parents and 
guardians " are having them made to read, 
whether they like it or no, but to persons who, 
from the very fact that they begin this book, 
show that they wish to be set on a good track of 
study for study's own sake. 

Well, to return and make available our com- 
parison between learning a literature and learning 
a place. We are not going to dictate a rigidly- 
systematic course — a pedantically-divided system 
— because, as a tourist is not supposed to be en- 
gaged on an ordnance map, so our reader is not 
supposed to be reading for acquirement only. He 

B 2 



4 A Course of English Literature. 

is reading for development, for cnlture in the 
proper sense, to make himself a fuller, happier, 
completer man in his own practical occupation in 
life. A tourist does not go to settle, and our 
reader is not intending to be a book-man proper, 
■ but only to derive the general benefit which every- 
body may get (with proper attention) from books. 
Suppose him to be visiting London. He does not 
inspect it by the postal districts, and exhaust K 
before beginning E. He sees Westminster Abbey 
in the morning; in the afternoon, visits a 
manufactory ; in the evening goes to a play. A 
traveller who did only one such thing, however 
systematically, would not know London. He 
might be — would of course be — better acquainted 
with his own branch than the other traveller. But 
then it is not our object to teach people speciali- 
ties which only special men themselves are able to 
do, and which, besides, only a few care to learn. 
Nor does any system of education undertake this. 
The universities do not profess to make all their 
members great scholars, but they give some 
scholarship to everybody, and they set the few 



Literary History. 5 

who are destined to great attainments in the right 
way. Accordingly, we repeat, our method will 
not be so exact and regular as some people 
pretend it should be. We shall classify for 
convenience, but we beg to point out first how 
much freedom we allow to those who adopt our. 
classification. 

For example, history and poetry are two dis- 
tinct branches ; but it would be useless to separate 
them in such a way as by making history the 
study of one year and poetry of another. Light 
literature is a department by itself, again; but 
we are not going to recommend that everybody 
should finish his serious literature first. Philo- 
sophy may, with still greater facility, be isolated ; 
because the connection between it and other 
studies is less apparent than — though equally real 
as — the connection between other studies. Yet, 
in any given age, all these branch off from one 
common root in the life of that age, as clearly as 
the various branches (each with its own share of 
leaf, blossom, and fruit) in a tree. After the 
Restoration, for instance, our politics were for a 



6 A Course of English Literature. 

time very retrograde. Precisely at that time the 
selfish philosophy was most in vogue, and specula- 
tion delighted to show whatever was most deroga- 
tory to the human mind to be among the most 
powerful elements in the human character. His- 
tory accordingly is written in that time with less 
dignity and spirit than in others. Light literature 
(equally by the same law) is more licentious. 
Poetry (precisely in proportion) is less noble. 
Now, supposing a student to have confined him- 
self mechanically to one of these subjects — 
passing down, say, through that period — with only 
one of them occupying his mind and attention, 
what but a faint, colourless conception could he 
have of the time? No one narrative of the 
period, say, from 1660 to 1700, would give such 
an insight into its character as a kind of simul- 
taneous examination of several of its products. 
That would show you that Charles's conduct, and 
the objectionable parts of Dryden, and the in- 
fluence of Hobbes, and the neglect of " Paradise 
Lost," and the comedies of Etherege and 
Wycherley — were all parts of one great phase in 



Literary History. 7 

the life of England. And we are going to pre- 
scribe — not no system at all in reading, but a 
better, though less superficially regular, system, 
than has generally been in fashion. We are 
going to advise, not that you should take history 
" from the Conquest," then philosophy from the 
same epoch — and so on ; but that you should take 
groups and epochs, and conduct your reading in 
that fashion. To suppose another case — we would 
have you take up Chaucer when busy with the 
story of Chaucer's age — Shakspeare and Bacon 
in Elizabeth's age — and so on throughout. For, 
indeed, there is a much closer relationship be- 
tween literature and life than is at all recognised 
in our common writing and talk. It is not by 
chance, but by law, that what we call genius and 
taste fluctuate and change their fashions. A 
small generation never produces a great litera- 
ture ; and hence the importance of studying things 
in that connection which we have just so strongly 
dwelt upon. In fact, we shall allow the student 
to vary his subjects liberally, though always with 
an eye to the chronological harmony already 



8 A Course of English Literature. 

recommended. Is he, for instance, engaged in 
the perusal of that great historical work, the 
" Decline and Fall " of Gibbon ? This is an ad- 
mirable standing dish of study ; but we would not 
confine him to that alone. There can be no 
better time to look into the general light litera- 
ture of Gibbon's age than when one is occupied 
with Gibbon's history — for such light reading will 
help you to feel the moral atmosphere (so to 
speak) in which he lived. His own autobio- 
graphy and diaries ; the life and letters of Gray ; 
the life and letters of Hume ; the delightful work 
of Boswell ; the unique and incomparable (in its 
own style) correspondence of Horace Walpole — 
all form the fitting accompaniments to the stately 
and pointed periods of the illustrious author in 
question. This plan, you will see, allows amply 
for literary recreation and variety, while it acts as 
a check on that vague rambling from period to 
period which may be indulged in, indeed, after a 
solid foundation of general knowledge has been 
laid, but which is mischievous before. We pro- 
pose, then, to treat simultaneously of different 



Literary History. 9 

branches of English literature, but always with 
an eye to their grouping in epochs ; and with 
History for the back-bone of the whole course. After 
a general view of the subject in its entirety — that 
is, of the preliminary studies necessary before 
special studies — we shall adopt the natural order 
in dealing with our literature, the order of Pro- 
vidence itself — the order of time. For we need 
scarcely say, not only that all the branches of our 
literature are related to each other, but that they 
all evolve themselves out of a previous stage of 
life, precisely like any other natural production. 
A nation that produces songs when it is barbarous, 
produces refined poetry when it is polished. 
There is no leaf where there has been no sap ; 
and one may almost infallibly say, that a people 
without a history will be without a future. 

Now, from these introductory observations, the 
reader will not be surprised if we begin by re- 
commending the aspiring youth whom we suppose 
to be listening to us, to break ground in the 
department of literary history — the history of 
literature itself. It is one that is imperfectly 



io A Course of English Literature. 

cultivated in our language as yet ; but something 
has been done ; and, indeed, when a man comes 
to look into things, he generally finds that more 
has been done than he fancied. 

As the writers of our own generation and that 
immediately before it, had the start of us in 
studying past times, and yet lived in the middle 
of influences much the same as our own, it is al- 
ways necessary to consider their views very care- 
fully, whatever we may intend to do ourselves. 
So that prudence, as well as curiosity, induces one 
to peruse whatever has been done for literary 
history by Isaac Disraeli, Campbell, Hallam, 
Macaulay, De Quincey, Carlyle — the essayists, 
such as Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt — or the less 
remarkable, but still valuable literati, who have 
executed such work for the various publications 
of the Messrs. Chambers and Mr. Knight. This 
handful of modern writers, duly examined, will 
whet your curiosity to know more, while really 
teaching you a good deal ; and by arranging what 
is so learnt in due mental order, you will begin to 
form some notion of the set of currents of thought 



Literary History. 1 1 

and taste in our history. This you should always 
endeavour to discern in your reading on the 
subject ; it is good exercise in itself, as a process ; 
and by and by your knowledge will be all the 
more coherent in your conception, not to mention 
more handy for your use, from your having kept 
this end in view. 

But the authors just named are very diverse, 
and people must be helped to read them. We 
take them, first, as the men nearest in time to 
ourselves, and as forming a kind of introduction 
to that literary history which is our immediate 
topic. 

Isaac Disraeli is a gossip, but he is a gossip of 
genius, and he spent his life in reading — -two facts 
which give him a strong claim on a sensible man's 
attention. In his " Curiosities," " Amenities," 
and so forth, a great deal of literary information 
is embodied in a very pleasant style, and touches 
occur not only of acute but of profound criticism. 
It is a miscellaneous kind of information you get, 
but it is your own fault if you don't systematise 
it — not his. He had a perfect right to choose 



12 A Course of English Literature. 

his own form of communicating his thought, and 
probably could not have written half so well in 
any other. Above all, he awakens curiosity to 
know more, and you will be grateful to him for 
this in after years. 

In mentioning Campbell, we had it in our eye 
to direct you to his " Specimens of the British 
Poets." Campbell's taste was fine, and his 
prose good. He will conduct you from poet to 
poet, generally giving very well-chosen selections, 
as you will see when we look more specially at 
the poets by and by. The same volume will 

\\ open to you the important Pope controversy of 
some forty years back, which makes an epoch in 
the subject. We assume, of course, that you 
may then make a diversion into Pope, not for 
the complete study to be talked of presently, but 
in his relation to Campbell's age. Follow up 

</ the interest through Byron's letters and Haz- 
litt's essay on this subject, taking occasion to 
read a good deal of Wordsworth, and to learn 
Wordsworth's views in his fi Preface to the Ly- 
rical Ballads," at the same time. Above all, 



Literary History. 13 

don't be in a hurry, but push steadily on in the 
direction where you feel your curiosity awakened. 
We are not such lovers even of the order of time 
as to check you for lingering where you feel a 
special zest, that being the state of mind into 
which knowledge sinks deepest and most per- 
manently. Perhaps this book of Campbell's may 
delay you long amidst the remarkable group of 
men of the last age. It may be that, beginning 
to feel a glimmer of the importance of the Words- 
worthian revolution, you desire to know more of 
the man and of his friends. Eead on, by all 
means, taking their works and their biographies 
together, as, indeed, we counsel you to do in all 
cases. Wordsworth's character and ideas may 
be learned from the u Life," by Dr. Words- 
worth ; and in the " Life and Correspondence of 
Southey," by his son ; the " Biographia Lite- 
raria " of Coleridge ; Cottle's " Eecollections " of, 
and Gilman's (unfinished) biography of that 
poet, will help ; Moore's " Byron ;" Leigh 
Hunt's " Autobiography ;" and Lord Cockburn's 
" Jeffrey," may be taken in the same connection; 



14 A Course of English Literature. 

and the essays of Macaulay and De Quincey will 
assist, together with Talfourd's " Lamb," in 
gniding you to an appreciation of the age. Of 
course, we pass over many books here, for we shall 
deal again with the period as part of the course. 
But knowing that such digressions are inevitable, 
and often beneficial, we have seized the oppor- 
tunity to show how they may best be made. 
Through all such a digression, the proper thing 
to do would be to keep in view the re-action 
which was then in progress against the most 
famous writers of the eighteenth century, a clear 
perception of which will assist you to a know- 
ledge both of those writers themselves and their 
successors. 

Mr. Hallam's great book on the literature of 
Europe is a solid, elaborate, and complete view of 
the most important periods of modern literary 
history. Jokers call writers like Hallam " heavy," 
but we go to jokers for their fun, and not for their 
opinions, and those who seek only amusement 
from reading, will be twaddlers and triflers for 
life. In reading Hallam, your main object will 



Literary History. 15 

be our own literary history; but lie will show you 
how that has been affected by the literatures of 
other countries. Good sense — weighty sagacity — 
rather than a very delicate and tender relish for 
beauty or grace, is the characteristic of Mr. 
Hallam ; weigh well all that bears, in his pages, 
on the history of opinion. A sense of the niceties 
of poetry and humour is found in gayer and 
lighter minds of his time : in Leigh Hunt, 
for instance (an admirable belles-lettrist), and 
Charles Lamb — who have many fine remarks 
on our older poets, and on our essayists and 
humourists. The great use of all such criticism 
is to lead you to the originals, without reading 
which you will only know as much of them from 
criticism as you would learn from books about a 
foreign country. To read about writers, without 
reading them, is very imperfect work ; and what 
we are now doing is preparing you only for a 
general notion of the country to be gone over. 
Macaulay's papers on " Byron," " Boswell's 
Johnson," " Addison," and others, open up 
the scholarly man-of-the-world's view of these 



1 6 A Course of English Literature. 

subjects, and are excellent of their kind. Car- 
lyle's " Scott," and " Johnson," (not to mention 
that Carlyle's " Essays " are the best of his 
works to begin studying him from) are deeper, 
more hearty, and more human. The " Johnson," 
for instance, will show a student what criticism 
can do; it being the real source of that re- 
newed relish for the old doctor's character 
and writings which is now seen everywhere. By 
the way, you cannot too early read " Boswell's 
Johnson," and it may be read in any order, or at 
any time ; for it is really a book by itself. It is, 
without exaggeration, worth all other lives of 
men of letters (a very weak branch of our 
literature) put together. 

It is probable, that, as you begin to feel your 
way in the history of English literature, the lives 
of men of letters will be among the first objects 
of your curiosity. Say, that after exploring the 
sources already indicated, and accompanying 
them by a perusal of such works as they force 
more specially on your attention, keeping, the 
while, an eye to dates, order, and the influence of 






Literary History. 17 

writers on each other, you have likewise sought 
out further aids to the general literary history of 
the kingdom. Say that in so doing you have 
made the acquaintance of Warton's " History of 
Poetry" (though it stops early), of the sober old 
" Biographia Britannica" (in the edition of Dr. 
Kippis), which has perhaps too many parsons in 
it, but which is indispensable ; of the " Athene 
Oxonienses" of Antony Wood, edited by the late 
Dr. Bliss— a perfect mine of information — and of 
various other books of reference. Well, whatever 
branch of our literature, or whatever epoch, you 
are about to begin upon, it is natural to desire 
that you should know the lives of the writers you 
are going to study. Begin, then, with the stan- 
dard works of this kind. Such a work is Johnson's 
" Lives of the Poets," for instance, in which you 
see the doctor's style at its very best. Sir Walter 
Scott has written excellent sketches of the novelists 
— and Lord Brougham of the men of letters of 
the last century. Southey's "Cowper" is an 
admirable work. Thackeray's " Humourists " 
contains portraiture more life-like and real than 



1 8 A Course of English Literature. 

is to be found almost anywhere. Gray is em- 
balmed in the quartos of Mason ; there is a great 
deal of information in Forster's " Goldsmith"; and 
an elegant narrative from the latest discoveries 
is supplied by Carruthers's " Pope." But it is 
not our intention to treat of the whole subject of 
biography yet, so we only indicate a few of the 
leading aids in literary history. The books already 
named, together with Miss Aikin's " Life of 
Addison," and the "Life of David Hume," by 
Mr. Hill Burton, are among the best specimens 
of the biography of the authors of the last cen- 
tury. As we ascend beyond that, good books of 
the kind are fewer. We are at this moment 
without a worthy life of Milton; and that of 
Dryden, by Malone, though very learned, has 
little else to recommend it ; being very unequal 
in style, of course, to that prefixed to the edition 
of Dry den's writings by Scott. The " Lives" of 
Isaac Walton are among the most charming in 
the language, however, and it is to be wished 
they were more numerous. What is known of 
Shakspeare has been told variously by Collier, 



Literary History. 19 

Halliweil, and Charles Knight; and the grim 
and acrid Gifford has vindicated " rare Ben Jon- 
son" with vigour in the memoir to be found 
before his edition of Ben's plays. We are not 
going to advise that these different books should 
be perused one after another, but we indicate 
them for reference on proper occasions, and as 
samples of what has been well done in this line. 
General knowledge must precede special know- 
ledge ; and the object of this Introduction is to 
show the student how he may learn something of 
his whole line of country before settling on a 
particular spot. We shall have to say more of 
biography on a future occasion ; and we repeat, 
that in beginning every work, whether important 
or not, the reader will do well to make himself 
acquainted with its author's life — his corre- 
spondence, if such exist — nay, even his portrait, if 
possible. We shall keep in mind this point, in 
urging on him the perusal of works of whatever 
description. 

Supposing, then, that the student has acquired 
some tolerably defined outline of the general 

c 2 



20 A Course of English Literature. 

history of our literature, lie will also do well to 

peruse one or two good treatises on the general 

history of its several branches. The dissertations 

prefixed to the " Encyclopedia Britannica," by 

Dugald Stewart and Sir James Mackintosh, will 

introduce him to the great world of philosophy, 

and should be followed by a careful study of some 

of the essays of Sir William Hamilton, to which 

we add the acute and agreeable " Biographical 

History of Philosophy," by Mr. G. H. Lewes. 

But no summaries of wide subjects are more 

instructive than those found up and down the 

great reviews. To begin the " Edinburgh" or 

" Quarterly" from the beginning, and read it 

through, would, indeed, be absurd ; but there is 

no branch of literature which has not at different 

times been ably handled by both. Along with 

these, we rank the encyclopaedias, such as the 

" Britannica" and" Metropolitan, " the " Penny 

Cyclopaedia," unpretending but admirable, and 

other large collections which we need not specify. 

To rush into every subject, or a tenth of the 

subjects, handled in such works, would be mad- 



Literary History. 2 1 

ness, and would probably end in something worse 
than ignorance itself. But as aids, as introduc- 
tions, as summaries, when your object can be 
attained by a summary, these books are valued by 
all reading men. It would be ludicrous to set 
up for an authority on Cicero on the strength of 
the article " Cicero" in one of them; yet you 
might have read him for years and still learn 
something from it ; and better know him from 
that than not at all. There is a line which has 
made more noise in the world than almost any 
line of poetry — 

" A little learning is a dangerous thing " — 

and we suppose we must say a word or two about 
it on an occasion like the present. Some say that 
it is true, and some that it is false — but the fact 
is, that it is neither. Like most epigrams, it is 
half -true — or true, as far as it goes, and not in its 
fullest consequences, 

" A little learning is a dangerous thing" — 

but just as a little gunpowder is — being also a 
useful thing. It all depends on what you do 



22 A Course of English Literature. 

with it — whether you employ it wisely or no. If 
you go to work to increase it, it is certainly valu- 
able as a nucleus, and if that is impossible, you 
can still avoid presuming on it, and it will be 
valuable as far as it extends. On some subjects 
the best of us must be content to know but little 
all our lives, and we need not turn up our noses 
at anything Providence allows us. 

The preliminary reading, above recommended, 
having been gone through, the question arises in 
what order we shall treat of the deeper inquiries 
which now become necessary ? 

We have already expressed our preference for 
l~he order of Time, and also showed why we advise 
studies to be pursued concurrently, when they are 
taken together or in groups. We have before 
illustrated the method, shown that after a cer- 
tain preliminary course, Bacon should be taken 
along with Shakspeare, and the wits of the time, 
like Nash or the Marprelate men, with both. 
This is the plan we shall pursue. 

But as this plan is based on the historical order, 
we shall devote our next chapter to the subject 



Literary History. 23 

of the study of English history. Sketching the 
succession of historical writers first, we shall then 
divide the course into its groups or epochs — that 
poetry, biography, &c, may find their proper 
connection with history and each other in their 
turns — the spirit and laws of history presiding, 
meanwhile, over all. 





II. 




ENGLISH HISTORY AND ENGLISH 
HISTORIANS. 

E give history the place of honour in our 
work — first, because every other study 
must connect itself with it; and, se- 
condly, because we have already recommended 
historical order and grouping to the student of all 
other branches whatever. What we now propose 
to do is to begin with some general cautions and 
directions as to the way in which history ought to 
be approached by the reader ; and then to offer 
some criticisms on our best historians, prepara- 
tory to showing how to conduct one's course of 
reading according to the system of Epochs 
promulgated in our first chapter. 



English History and English Historians. 25 

History is a branch of literature which has gone 
through the most remarkable changes, and which 
is changing, now-a-days, even before our eyes. 
It is the most comprehensive branch, too; for 
there is no quality any other great writer can 
have which will not be of use to the historian, or 
which has not been shown by some historian. 
Philosophy? — What will the narrator of great 
public events be without philosophy, or the power 
of dealing with causes, and discerning law where 
others see only confusion? Poetry? — No poetical 
genius can find nobler employment than in deli- 
neating the great scenes with which history has 
to deal. And if it be the chief quality for which 
we honour the writer of fiction that he can create 
character, how could that quality be better shown 
than in creating portraits, equally interesting, of 
persons that are real, and whose characters have 
affected the fortunes of mankind ! Considerations 
like these should induce the man who reads at 
all, to make history (in the largest sense) his 
chief object ; for it is the thread, so to speak, on 
which all the pearls of literature hang. 



26 A Course of English Literature. 

There is no doubt, however, that there is an 
impression abroad that history is dull reading, 
and, unhappily, there are good reasons why this 
opinion should prevail. While saying a few 
words on this topic, we shall endeavour to show 
how the student can manage to make his task 
more interesting than he perhaps thinks. But, 
at the same time, we must premise that we do 
not profess to address those who expect all litera- 
ture to be amusing, or every page of the book of 
knowledge to be either pungent or picturesque. 
Literature, like life itself, is an affair partly of 
serious hard work and partly of excitement and 
amusement, of fine days and rainy days, head- 
aches and high spirits, and must be faced with 
sobriety and seriousness accordingly. The "great 
passages " which fill the fancy and stir the blood, 
only come now and then in the best writers ; and 
though the deepest and highest are also the 
most readable authors, in the long-run, still 
we must discard the notion that any of them 
are to be approached in a mere spirit of levity. 
Few, we dare say, can honestly assert with Horner 



English History and English Historians. 27 

(in his " Diary"), that after a good spell of 
metaphysics, they " take up Livy to refresh them- 
selves;" and it would be better never to open 
such an author at all than to pretend to enjoy him 
in this way. But still there is a medium in things. 
The real Waterloo was not Astley's Waterloo; 
and he who would know anything well must spend 
long days in labours not much less severe or more 
amusing than the work of a bricklayer. 

The way, as we think, of approaching the study 
of history with the greatest certainty of catching 
its real spirit (and this is the interesting way, too, 
of reading), is to enter into each epoch, making up 
your mind to look at it, for the time, from its own 
point of view. They were not lay-figures, our 
ancestors — engaged in manufacturing results for 
heavy gentlemen to lecture upon, but real men of 
flesh and blood, like ourselves, in whom (however 
indistinctly) the germs of all that we have 
become are to be seen. Be careful, therefore, not 
to trust to " philosophical historians " only, as 
they are called; for, first, they differ amoDgst 
themselves so seriously, that you will not know 



/ 



28 A Course of English Literature. 

which to believe, and also, you can only get faint 
notions of the past out of them. The evil of read- 
ing about past times instead of in past times is 
seen every day in conversation, where you will 
find people holding forth " views " who have very 
vague notions of the facts on which they are 
formed. These views they get at second-hand, 
and the very air of completeness about them is 
misleading. There is nothing for it, to correct 
this, but the study of events in their original 
sources, which, even done on a slight scale, is 
more instructive than the study of many a pre- 
tentious history, assuming to show how and why 
the events happened, and (more presumptuously) 
labelling the actors in these events as decidedly 
as one hangs round decanters such labels as 
"port" and " sherry." Is it so easy to under- 
stand character ? Do you find it so in the case 
of living persons? Confess that history has 
seemed to you dull reading, chiefly from the 
ponderous reflections of many of its writers, who 
tell us that the "tendency" of the age was 
so-and-so — that such-and-such a king had 



English History and English Historians. 29 

" firmness without temerity " — " modesty without 
bashfulness " — and " decision without rigour," 
&c. If our historians are now acquiring a greater 
reality, more human sympathy, and more dra- 
matic force, it is chiefly because, since the great 
French revolution, Europe has had a succession 
of mighty events and memorable persons, and 
our historians have felt that kind of stir of 
which history is the record. The reader may not 
have engaged in political excitement or served 
a campaign, yet may still be able to realise to 
himself that the men who in all ages have done 
such things have been men with pluck, and 
heart, and fancy, about them, and have deserved 
a better fate than to be preached over in a kind 
of historical funeral sermons by bores. 

Now-a-days, the " original sources " have be- 
come more accessible than they were. Translations 
of many of the old monkish chroniclers have been 
published in cheap, or tolerably cheap, issues — 
accessible to people who could not have ventured 
on the obscure original Latin text of the old folios ; 
the knowledge of which, however, is indispensable 



30 A Course of English Literature. 

to historians and critics. The chief interest of these 
writers just is, that in their simplicity they never 
ventured on the " philosophy " of events at all, 
but narrated them as simply as they received 
them from the knights, barons, or priests who 
(staying at the monasteries for a day or two) told 
them over the fire. They did not suppose that 
there was anything in history more " dignified" 
than life itself, and therefore they give us anec- 
dotes and sayings which Mr. Carlyle's friend, 
Dr. Dryasdust, would not introduce without an 
apology. But then it is just these apparently 
small things which constitute the very life of 
history, and the popular notions, even now, of 
old half-forgotten personages are generally formed 
in such anecdotes, &c, which have been trans- 
mitted from the old chroniclers from hand to 
hand. With a chronicler you form a kind of 
personal acquaintance. When he tells you (as 
Ordericus Vitalis does) that it is now getting 
cold, that winter is coming on, and that he 
means to postpone continuing his history till 
next spring, it is impossible not to feel that 



English History and English Historians. 3 1 

such, simplicity is a kind of guarantee for the 
genuineness of other parts of the book. And 
as for the absurd or legendary portions of such 
books, your own sense is a quite sufficient pro- 
tection against credulity about them. You are 
sure not to believe Matthew of Westminster 
very literally, when he tells you that Kollo was 
descended' from Japhet through Magog ; nor does 
that the least affect his veracity when he informs 
us that on Hollo's besieging Chartres, the people 
beld out over the wall against him the sacred 
chemise of the Virgin, at which the old Nor- 
wegian heathen u laughed." Yet that trifling 
story is worth a volume of prosing about the 
superstitions of the " Middle Ages " and the 
savageness of the " Danes." 

Take an instance or two (after our precedent in 
Chapter First) of the application of the doctrine 
we are now urging. The other day, a grave 
historical writer — -a doctor, too — had occasion to 
mention those Danish, incursions, which in the 
ninth and tenth centuries vexed England and 
France, and, in their consequences, profoundly 



32 A Course of English Literature. 

affected the history of both countries. How did 
the excellent man put the fact ? " The Scandi- 
navians" says he, u frequently disturbed the public 
tranquillity of all Britain" What a picture of 
that fierce old barbarous life! The chronicles 
bring it before you bodily. The wild sea-kings 
landing in their boats ; the monks sinking the gold 
plate belonging to the altar in the well of the 
convent for safety ; monasteries blazing ; orchards 
torn up ; and so on. How would you like con- 
temporary history told in this doctor's way ? for 
instance, the Crimean "War celebrated in such a 
style ? 

Or take the case of the history of Oliver Crom- 
well. His character was not understood till his 
" Letters and Speeches" were fairly dug out, put 
in order, and studied for their own sake as the 
real sources of the story of his life. The old 
theories were then knocked to bits, and now 
those who will not accept him as a great 
Puritan hero, honest from the beginning, are, at 
least, compelled to form new theories. Nobody 
calls him a mere hypocrite ; nobody calls him a 






English History and English Historians. 33 

mere fanatic. Those who do not like him have to 
spin out a new philosophy — weaving the hypocrisy 
theory and the honest theory together somehow — 
and making what they can out of it. This should 
be a warning to us not to form a positive and 
final opinion of any man in history till we have 
examined him, as near as we can get, at first 
hand. A person who decides on great characters 
without such examination is a mere parrot — a 
pretender. When he rounds off great generalisa- 
tions — shying, meanwhile, all personal detail — 
it is almost invariably safe to bawl out " Pin- 
nock ! " Indeed, we trust that you will be some 
considerable time before you make decisions upon 
anything. We assume that some time will be 
required, in fact, before you are fit for it ; and 
generally speaking, you will learn the faster for 
not talking about subjects of which you are only 
learning the elements-. 

Well, then, assuming that you incline to seek 
" original sources " as much as possible, we will 
further show how such a resolution ought to be 
beneficial. It will especially aid in placing a 



34 A Course of English Literature. 

student in those times which he is studying by 
inducing him to catch (as before advised) some- 
thing of their own spirit and own point of view. 
The Abbe Hue learned China by learning Chinese, 
dressing like a native, and eating and drinking 
like one. Try a little of this plan with a period ; 
your own position as a modern is quite sufficient 
ballast to keep you from soaring too high in 
imitation of a past age. Try and feel why and 
how such a man came to act in such and such a 
way, and whether you would not have acted 
similarly in the same position. The result will 
probably strike you that every age has a standard 
of conduct by which it is fair to try its own men. 
And hence the absurdity of measuring men or 
institutions in one age by the standard of another. 
Monks would be a nuisance in England now, 
without doubt ; but there was a time * when a 
monastery was the focus of whatever civilisation 
there was in the country. From it proceeded 
horticulture and agriculture, fishing, a gleam or 
two of literature, some leech-craft, some en- 
couragement of art. Forests to the extent which 



English History and English Historians. 35 

they once occupied would be great inflictions — 
especially with their stringent game laws — now- 
a-days. But when people built almost everything 
of wood, and fed great herds of swine, and had 
no coal, and when game was a staple article of 
food, and not (as with us) a luxury only, it was a 
very different story. The hunting then, too, was 
partly for necessity, but also it was an exercise 
absolutely necessary to keep men in fit order for 
war. When things are studied in their connection 
in this way, they become more intelligible. A 
tournament seems a singular amusement, but it 
was partly at tournaments that we learned to ride 
down the French at Cressy and Agincourt. Long 
before those ages, our Danish ancestors pursued 
" piracy." But it does not follow that an old 
viking was the same kind of man as a nautical 
Bill Sykes of our age. Havelock would have 
been a "pirate" in the ninth century, while 
Bill might equally have been hanged for vulgar 
robbery. The explanation is, that piracy was 
their war : but by using the names of things with- 
out attention to the history of language, we con- 

d 2 



36 A Course of English Literature. 

fuse and misunderstand the characters of periods. 
For example, let us suppose that we begin to 
discuss the Druids. When we read of their 
superstitions, and sway over the Celtic peoples, 
we naturally feel an extreme satisfaction that 
Britain has outlived such a state of religious 
organisation. But it by no means follows that 
the Druids were as great scoundrels as a set of 
men would be who should recommend Druidism 
now; or as the Mormon elders are, who have 
access to a higher morality than they preach. 
An age, in fact, ought to be studied like a phase 
in any growth, whether of an animal or a tree ; 
the ages have each their own mark, indeed, like 
the rings on an old tree. And the way to learn 
them distinctly is to learn them both at first 
hand, and with a certain sympathy. When a 
man hastily stigmatises an age as "dark," and 
leaves it, he acts unwisely. A wise man waits 
patiently, and strikes a light. 

With these preliminary warnings as to how the 
study of history should be approached, which, 
also, will be further illustrated by-and-by, we 



English History and English Historians. 37 

come to the second topic prescribed above for this 
chapter — a review of some of our best historians. 

Probably our readers will recollect that the 
question, how we are provided with historians ? 
was opened some years ago by Earl Russell, 
and led to a good deal of discussion. It was 
then decided pretty generally, that Hume still 
remained our foremost man ; and that by 
persons who well knew, and openly recognised, 
Hume's deficiencies. Our earliest task, there- 
fore, will be to offer some criticisms on Hume's 
History of England. 

And, first of all, we do not wonder at this 
supremacy of David Hume. He was, as nobody 
doubts, a great thinker — a man who had read 
and thought for many years before he began his 
history at all ; and it is equally certain that he 
writes a fine style — lucid, flowing, stately, and 
comprehensive. And Hume has a distinct view. 
His history is a whole. He everywhere traces 
the laws which were working under the surface 
of the events he narrates ; and when we remember 
his long habits of reflection on the principles of 



38 A Course of English Literature. 

human nature and human character, it would be 
absurd not to acknowledge that his insight is 
profound. Anybody, therefore, reading Hume, 
finds a perfectly intelligible theory of English 
history communicated to him in a very charming 
and impressive form. Nothing, it is obvious, 
can supersede this — as a work of Art — except a 
greater work of Art. But though it is easy to 
show that Hume was, in certain parts of his 
book, wrong and mistaken, it is quite a different 
thing to write a greater history than Hume did. 
He was a very great man — and unfortunately our 
history is not often written by very great men. 
So that Hume will only be permanently super- 
seded when we get somebody who is as great as 
Hume in all respects, and knows the history of 
England much better. There stands his history, 
complete in itself, like a marble temple. One 
man finds fault with one part, one with another, 
but nobody has yet built so noble a building for 
the same purposes. 

Accordingly, there is nothing for it, but to 
remember what Hume's faults were; and when 



English History and English Historians. 39 

one reads him to read other writers, for the sake 
of the advantages they may have over him. 
What, then, were his faults ? 

With all his greatness and clearness of intelli- 
gence there was a defect in Hume, vitally serious 
as a historian. He lacked sympathy. With some 
of the most important manifestations of human 
nature and human character he had no feeling in 
common. Long before he undertook history, he 
had, in his capacity of philosopher, formed for 
himself a system of thinking, which had the 
effect of fortifying impregnably his natural want 
of the sympathy of which we speak. The reli- 
gious spirit, for instance, he regarded with a kind 
of pity, at the best ; and, in certain combinations, 
with profound contempt. This at once shut him 
out from feeling with, or even understanding, 
some of the most important men and movements 
of modern times. The force exerted by religion 
he was sensible of externally — as a scientific man 
whose business it was to calculate forces. But 
that was all. He did not love it ; and hence he 
was impressed, not so much by its good as by its 



40 A Course of English Literature. 

bad side. All early ages were to him mere scenes 
of darkness and turmoil, when the real gods of 
his idolatry — philosophy and letters — were un- 
known. He applied the standard of the accom- 
plished and luxurious eighteenth century to every 
other period, and never could feel for an age 
when there were no quartos published, no acade- 
mies, no pleasant little free-thinking suppers, no 
snug " Advocate's Libraries " to sprawl in, with 
books lying round you on the floor. It was a 
kind of good-humoured narrowness, a philosophic 
bigotry, Hume's way of looking at things. Not 
that there was anything ungenerous about it. 
Personally, he was a most agreeable, benevolent, 
homely philosopher, rather fat, fond of a game of 
backgammon or a glass of port ; and would no 
more have persecuted anybody for his opinions 
than he would have turned cannibal. Indeed, 
his History of England is as much a record of 
progress, and a canonisation of progress, as the 
sturdiest Radical could require. But then it was 
from his peculiar standing-point that he regarded 
progress. He was glad that the feudal times had 



English History and English Historians. 41 

passed away, and a baron in chain-mail was a 
figure whom he loved not very much more (except 
for his own descent from such barons) than does 
Mr. Bright. Yet, his real creed was in a kind of 
intellectual aristocracy, at least as exclusive as 
any kind that ever breathed. For the vast, 
aspiring, uncultivated masses — as far, at least, 
as their aspirations for power went — he had no 
sympathy whatever. Had he lived to see the 
French revolution, he would infallibly have been 
against it as decidedly as Gibbon was ; while, 
from the half-indiiferent way in which he speaks 
of Shakspeare, it is doubtful whether he would 
have cared for the literary revival of Wordsworth, 
Scott, and Byron at all. 

It is commonly said that he was a Tory ; and 
that his history favours the Tory view of the civil 
war, is certain. Old Johnson would not allow 
Hume any merit for his Toryism. " Sir," said 
he, "he was a Tory by chance." This is partly 
true. He was not a Tory from Johnson's own 
point of view, while for the " right divine " of the 
older school of Tories he had a supreme disdain. 



42 A Course of English Literature. 

The explanation of his Toryism, is, that if there 
was anything in the world which he despised 
heartily in his capacity of a philosopher, it was a 
fanatic. Now in the civil war, what Hume called 
the fanatics (and also the real fanatics) were 
against the king. He looked on the whole tribe 
as noisy unphilosophical persons, and this coloured 
his view of the entire movement of their age. He 
knew that Charles was an accomplished gentle- 
man, whose religion never got the upper hand of 
his common sense ; and he also knew that the 
Puritans were in the habit of quoting the book of 
Revelations, which he probably ranked below the 
Koran. Accordingly, he was led insensibly to 
scrutinise the Puritan proceedings with great 
severity, the result of which is that leaning to 
the Cavalier side which places his history with 
" Toryism." But in fact, the real key to his 
political opinions is to be found in his general 
philosophy, and not in any decided political bent. 
He is for King Charles in narrating the civil war, 
but really that is all in which his Toryism con- 
sists. He approved the revolution settlement, 



English History and English Historians. 43 

and he cherished no more regard for the Pre- 
tender than any moderate Whig. Probably as a 
gentleman of a Jacobite county (Berwickshire), 
he may have had a little more sentiment on such 
subjects than a gentleman of Middlesex. Gene- 
rally, however, no great writer ever had less 
sentiment of any kind ; a fact which squares with 
all that we have already remarked of the character 
of his mind. 

Accordingly, his great history (for such, after 
all, Hume's History is) must be constantly read 
with a tacit reference to the point of view of 
the historian, as we have endeavoured to explain 
it. He is unconsciously unfair to all the earlier 
ages and more original men of the centuries 
which he reviews — especially to the heroic, martyr- 
like, or saint-like men, for whose sublime self- 
devotion there was no place in the clear cold ice- 
palace of his philosophy. This is his cardinal 
fault. And, as is always the case, the defects of 
his nature are seen in their influence on his style. 
It wants depth of music, picture, passion, and 
(speaking generally) grandeur. It raises no vivid 



44 -4 Course of English Literature. 

emotion, nor haunts the memory with the echo of 
its greatness, like the roll of sea-waves. But it 
is translucently clear and fine j and in certain 
touches of a negligent dignity, it is even fasci- 
nating. Perhaps the best part of it, in a literary 
point of view, is the narrative of the campaigns 
in our Civil War, which is singularly compre- 
hensive and perspicuous ; and the little isolated 
remarks on character and human nature are 
everywhere profound. There is an epigram in 
Macaulay which has been much admired, where 
he says that the Puritans were opposed to bear- 
baiting, not from sympathy with the bear, but 
from hatred of the sport. This remark (less 
neatly put) is in Hume. Sometimes, the philo- 
sopher has a brisk freak of real humour; as, 
indeed, in private life he frequently showed it. 
For instance, when speaking of the blasphemous 
ride of Naylor (during the Commonwealth times) 
into Bristol, in imitation of Christ's entry into 
Jerusalem, he tells us that Naylor rode on a 
horse — from the difficulty, no doubt, in that city, 
of finding an ass. This is scarcely becoming 



English History and English Historians. 45 

what is (often absurdly) called the " dignity of 
history." But the truth is, that Hume (who was 
a younger son) had once been placed in a com- 
mercial house in Bristol, and looked back with 
no great satisfaction to that period of his life. 

We have not yet had a work fairly doing 
justice to the question of the degree to which 
Hume has, through carelessness or otherwise, 
mistaken or misrepresented historical events. It 
is obvious that few are capable of dealing with 
such a subject in detail, and we would rather see 
you run the risk of blundering with a great writer 
than making blunders in hasty attempts to put 
him right. It has been thought that his studies 
for some portions of the book (he wrote back- 
wards,, be it observed — the Stuart reigns before 
the Plantagenet reigns, and so on) — were rather 
lazily conducted. He was somewhat of a gour- 
mand, and very possibly a little lazy, as he 
got up in life, and may have been content with 
a passage in Carte, when he ought to have 
examined three or four of the old chroniclers 
instead. We say that he may have laid him- 



46 A Course of English Literature. 

self open to this charge, though such an opinion 
ought to be expressed modestly: and though 
every competent reader of his " Essays " sees 
that he must have studied very hard at one 
period of his life. 

Any way, it is certain that the time for taking 
one's knowledge of English history from Hume 
alone is — if it ever existed — now gone by. His 
influence on small historians has been bad, by 
encouraging a sham-philosophical way of writing 
history — against which we have entered our pro- 
test above. And, though everybody must read 
him, and read him more than once, there are 
other and later historians whom we recommend 
to your general perusal ; and that before you 
commence the study by groups and epochs, which 
we shall presently expound in detail. 

We have said already, that in freshly opening 
on any branch of reading, you should make 
yourself acquainted with what your best contem- 
poraries have written on it, they having been the 
latest investigators of the whole subject, under 
the influence of that " spirit of the age," from 



English History and English Historians. 47 

the operation of which none of us are free. 
We shall, therefore, recommend the student of 
English history to acquire some knowledge of 
what has been written on his subject by such men 
as Mackintosh, Hallam, Carlyle, Macaulay, and 
others to be named — partly before entering on 
" original sources," and partly concurrently with 
the study of these. We gave Hume precedence 
for the sake of his great name and influence, and 
endeavoured to familiarise our readers with his 
point of view. This same office we shall endea- 
vour to discharge with regard to other historical 
writers in the next chapter. 





III. 




ENGLISH HISTORIANS— Continued. 

S it is a part of the system which we 
recommend that the student should, 
before attacking epochs of our history, 
gain something like a comprehensive idea about 
it as a whole, we are now going to speak of the 
historians to be perused after the famous David 
Hume. The grasp of that great writer's mind, and 
the graceful dignity of his style, will have left 
definite impressions of the outlines and meaning 
of our national story on the reader's memory. 
But though a great book never goes entirely out 
of fashion, the way of looking at subjects varies 
from age to age ; history, too, has been pursued 
with much zeal during the present century ; and 






English Historians. 49 

it is absolutely necessary to know it in its latest 
phases, whether you mean to study its sources by 
and by, or do not mean to do so. In the first 
case, you enjoy the advantage of the latest sif tings 
of the old material; in the last case, why not 
obtain the most recent results, at all events, of 
the investigation which you will not undertake 
for yourself? 

Well, then, supposing our reader to have 
achieved Hume, we don't know that he could do 
better than undertake Sir James Mackintosh, 
whose " History of England " first appeared in 
1830-31-32, in that "Cabinet Cyclopedia " for 
which Moore wrote the " History of Ireland," 
and Scott that of Scotland. We can hardly say 
that Sir James's book has attained a classical 
position like that of Hume. But it is written 
with great sagacity and clearness, and, besides, 
it represents a view and a school. Always read 
representative books, for they give the clue to 
the motives of parties, and the opinions of 
numbers of men. Short as Sir James's work is, 
you will find in it the moral basis of Lord 



50 A Course of English Literature. 

Macaulay's historical opinions. Probably no 
writer of bis young days had so much influence 
on Macaulay as Mackintosh. There is, indeed, a 
strong likeness between the men. Both are 
(as Sydney Smith said) " books in breeches : " 
though it must be admitted that Lord Macaulay's 
are the brighter patterns. He has far more wit, 
fancy, and liveliness, than his friend and pre- 
decessor; but the essentials of his philosophy 
are the same. Perhaps he is more of a party 
man, and more dogmatic, and we doubt, too, 
whether he is so liberal minded as his senior. 
There was a good-nature and homeliness about 
Mackintosh which make us (irrespective of opi- 
nions) regard his memory with something like 

affection. 

Mackintosh's history is of the philosophical 

school; has no dramatic, no inventive power; is, 
in fact, a kind of summing up of the results of 
history — to which object everything is made 
subordinate. He has a pre-conceived determina- 
tion as to the purport of what he is telling you — 
a theory about the facts, which he judges the 



English Historians. 5 1 

facts by. It is the Whig theory. He tells you, 
in his introduction, that ours is the " history of 
the progress of a great people towards liberty 
during six centuries." Accordingly, events are 
important to him in proportion to the shar*e which 
they had in this " progress." He does not pro- 
fess to present to us — and we cannot, therefore, 
demand from him, historical pictures. If he deals 
with the manners, or customs, or social life of our 
ancestors, it is still only as a philosopher. So 
that, even allowing that his philosophy was the 
true philosophy, his history could not be called 
a perfect history. Whenever we do get such a 
thing, it will be a philosophy, and a picture, and 
a drama in one — three strands interwoven into a 
rope of narrative. But you will find, as you read, 
that there is no such history yet written. One 
man gives us great events, the doings of great 
people, and so on ; another, the little events, 
such as figure in memoirs and biographies, with 
traces of fashion and manners ; a third, the pro- 
gress of law, the constitution, commerce, agri- 
culture, &c. ; a fourth, that of literature and 

e 2 



52 A Course of English Literature. 

thought; a fifth, all such details as ballads, su- 
perstitions, or costume. Every historian, for 
example, tells us that in a.d. 1066, William the 
Norman conquered England, parcelled it out 
among his followers, on the feudal system, and 
founded a dynasty which still subsists. They are 
most of them agreed, too, on certain effects of 
this great revolution upon England and Europe. 
But suppose you want to realise the Conquest as 
a whole, — its philosophy and all ? You must go 
to a dozen writers, even for a glimpse of it : the 
general historian will never tell you anything 
that would enable you to feel, in the vaguest 
manner, what kind of thing it would have been 
to be alive then. Yet this is what history ought 
to do, to be worthy of its name ; and this is the 
aim (as we shall have again to remark) of the 
best historians now. So that, when we tell you 
to read Hume or Mackintosh, we warn you, at 
the same time, that we are not responsible for any 
disappointment you may feel afterwards ; and that 
the best historians are only aids to the study of 
history. We call a man's book, by courtesy, the 



English Historians. 53 

" History of England;" but reflect on what such 
words really mean, and you will see that the best 
book is a mere vague approximation to what it 
ought to be. 

In specially inquiring for Mackintosh's point of 
view, it is quite possible that you may come to 
think it an unsatisfactory one. Like Hume, Sir 
James wanted, what, for want of a better phrase, 
we must call poetic sympathy with the past. At 
best, the excellent man seems to have thought 
that all England's doings for six centuries were 
really only a lead-up to an enlightened Whig 
ministry. For instance, in narrating the Danish 
and Saxon battles, he drops the unlucky expres- 
sion that our ancestors were " beasts of prey" at 
that time. Now their battles were unquestion- 
ably ferocious ; but after all, the stuff out of which 
their descendants (including our respectable 
selves) were made, cannot have been vitally inferior 
in the raw material to what it has become, in the 
manufactory of civilisation. Besides, they lived, 
and ate, and drank, and loved, and laughed, and 
had some kind of social order, and ties of kindred 



54 -4 Course of English Literature. 

and friendship, amongst themselves, too — all 
forming the quiet and deepest part of their lives — 
of which historians always, somehow, tell us the 
least. But it is the great failing of the modern 
historian, that he wants sympathy with common 
life. He is so full of his philosophy that he 
can enter into no life but one like his own. 
Lord Macaulay, for instance — the most brilliant 
man of the Mackintosh school — drew a picture 
of the condition of his own Highland ances- 
tors, in his History, which would have been 
an exaggeration of the wretchedness of the Mos- 
quito Indians. One must always be on one's 
guard with such writers ; for though their nar- 
rowness is the result, in the first instance, of a 
lack of geniality, and therefore involuntary and 
excusable, it helps them to important political 
consequences. To speak frankly, with a Whig 
historian all is secondary before 1688; and most 
things couleur-de-rose after it. This party feeling 
gives zest to our political writing ; but the student 
will find, in due course, that the real work neces- 
sary to our liberties and our civilisation was done 



English Historians. 55 

before either Whigs or Tories had been heard 
of in England. Moral— Trust implicitly to no 
historian, but read for yourself: read for know- 
ledge, and let your opinions grow. We should 
be sorry to name any historian, and ask you to 
follow his views implicitly — any historian what- 
ever ! All we can do is to indicate men respect- 
able for their genius and information, and do 
our best to let you into the secret of that real 
focus of interest, often already alluded to — their 
point of view. 

Having just touched on that of Mackintosh, we 
may add that, for a style not attaining classical 
dignity, his is a very good one. He had thought 
deeply on moral questions, and on human nature; 
and many acute remarks — the fruits of this study 
— are scattered up and down his pages. His 
" History of England," properly so called, comes 
down only to the time of Elizabeth — to the year 
of the Spanish Armada, 1588, — and the " Con- 
tinuation," by somebody or other, we do not 
recommend you to read unless you have more 
leisure than we have been able ourselves to com- 



56 A Course of English Literature. 

mand. But Sir James's special " History of the 
Revolution" must be carefully marked for perusal 
when you come to read of special periods. Pro- 
bably the advice given before — to learn something 
of an author's life at the same time that you 
happen to be employed on his works — will induce 
you to look through the memoirs of him by his 
son, and the capital sketch of him by his friend 
Sydney Smith. There you will see what a good- 
natured, thoroughly worthy man he was, and 
that the Whigs treated him just as well as they 
did Burke, or Dr. Parr, or Tom Moore, or Sydney 
himself. And there, as in his writings, the influ- 
ence he had on liberal thought and opinion is very 
perceptible. It turns up, in fact, everywhere, in 
Macaulay and the whole liberal school. Sir James 
— like Allen and Tom Moore, and others — was 
one of the " Holland House " luminaries, who ate 
capital dinners at the expense of Lord Holland, 
though occasionally snubbed by his lady, who, 
having been divorced from her first husband, wisely 
kept her second one in good order. There is no 
evidence, however, that Mackintosh had any of 



English Historians. 57 

the worst features of that clique ; on the contrary, 
he was one of the few men who have seriously 
loved knowledge for its own sake, and honestly 
preferred it to worldly advancement. 

Mr. Hallam did not write a history of Eng- 
land, but his " Middle Ages" and " Constitutional 
History" are works which nobody neglects to 
read, except either from ignorance or laziness. 
The former was published before most of us were 
born, but has been constantly revised, and a 
volume of notes has been added, which we strongly 
advise the reader to study in conjunction with the 
work itself. None of Mr. Hallam' s writings are 
so readable as Mr. Albert Smith's " Gent," but 
this is an objection which applies to many meri- 
torious performances, and we trust will never 
deter our faithful disciples from their perusal. 
The learning in his writings (seriously speaking) 
is of a nature which it would be presumptuous in 
any man under fifty to pretend to pass judgment 
upon. And what makes him so valuable to youth, 
especially, is, that he passes, by dint of this 
learning, all kinds of sages and scholars under 



58 A Course of English Literature. 

review, and is a guide to half a dozen fields of 
intellectual labour. For instance, in the latest 
edition of the " Middle Ages" with the " Notes," 
all the modern discoveries about our ancient con- 
stitution, laws, and manners are reviewed, and 
jets of critical light thrown on nearly all the 
authors whose names a student first hears when 
he takes to modern reading. In short, Mr. Hal- 
lam is a great historical critic, above all — a cha- 
racter which some may think inferior to the 
historian proper (like Hume or Gibbon, for in- 
stance), but which in his case means something 
infinitely more valuable and important than nine 
out of ten who commonly assume that honourable 
name. As everybody knows, he, too, was of the 
Whig school, and of course shared its predilec- 
tions ; but there is a dignity about his mind and 
a comprehensiveness in his knowledge which saves 
him from anything little in the way of party spirit. 
He always states his view, when there is strong 
difference of opinion, with moderation. You will 
not fail to observe how he hesitates to decide 
strongly on such questions as, who were members 



English Historians. 59 

of the great council of the realm under the first 
Plantagenets ; or how markedly he criticises the 
doings of the Long Parliament in his "Constitu- 
tional History." If anything, indeed, his cold- 
ness is the quality of which young readers com- 
plain ; in his capacity of judge, you are rather 
awed by the size of his wig ; he talks of the 
Elizabethans with a tone that jars a little on 
an ear fresh from Shakspeare and the " Fairy 
Queen" ; and in fact was probably deficient in 
geniality and imagination. But, then, we do not 
read in this hard-working world for excitement 
only, any more than we read for amusement only. 
A man may be ten times as brilliant as Hallam, 
without his opinion (which is the great matter 
after all) being worth half as much. Assuredly 
he is no poet ; and yet a man may know what the 
worth of chivalry was in Europe, for instance, 
without his style having any of the inspiration of 
the movement of horse and banner, trumpet and 
lance. The danger to a student lies between look- 
ing at history with the narrowness of a utilitarian, 
and the opposite extreme of seeing it only through 



60 A Course of English Literature. 

the glass of an historical novelist. Remember 
that before Sir Walter Scott could make the facts 
of the past beautiful, he had learned them by a 
process as prosaic in details as that of Professor 
Tomkins. 

There is, perhaps, no historian alive whom it is 
more necessary to read than Sir Francis Palgrave. 
He is a great antiquary, to begin with — a fact of 
which we may have again to remind you when 
speaking of the aids to the study of English 
history. What such men as Hume, for instance, 
had to take at second-hand, Sir Francis has seen 
at first-hand ; in forgotten old languages, old 
laws, and old records. Now it is, in reality, the 
increase of antiquarian research which has changed 
and is changing our modern historical writing. 
The philosophical historian wants more facts ; the 
pictorial historian, more details. Both must owe 
these to the antiquary, who in reality supplies at 
once bricks and straw. Palgrave, however, has 
not been an antiquary only, but an historian too, 
and has waded through old chronicles, not merely 
for his own sake, but to make fords and bridges 



English Historians. 61 



for us into the past world, over them. There are 
solid masses of information in his books, without 
consulting which nobody can learn our history. 
But they are not the kind of books that any 
reader but a resolute one will get through. His 
style can be divided into periods, like that of a 
famous painter ; and this was excellently done 
some years ago in " Blackwood," in an article 
attributed (rightly, we believe) to the Scotch his- 
torian, Mr. Hill Burton. Sometimes however, Sir 
Francis has written in anything but a winning or 
fascinating manner. To speak the honest truth, 
few very learned men do. His great " Anglo- 
Saxon " history is unquestionably heavy reading ; 
and must be stoutly encountered as a kind of 
Anglo-Saxon-constitutional walk up the steeps of 
literature. His " Normandy and England " is 
more interesting; for no man more resolutely 
strove not to be only an antiquary, but to re- 
produce with vividness what he had learned 
with labour. Nor was this attempt by any 
means a failure; for through the mighty mass 
of knowledge, there does burn something of 



62 A Course of English Literature. 

imaginative fire, and there is a Palgravian wit 
and humour which you come to like (as is the 
case with certain out-of-the-way liquors) after a 
while. But, speaking especially of the " Nor- 
mandy," there is also what we may call a 
tumultuous eccentricity of movement about Pal- 
grave's style, which frightens and wearies that, 
after all, somewhat fastidious man, the general 
reader. It is fitful and irregular, alternating 
between rhapsodies of philosophy, streaks of 
quaint picturesqueness, irregular abrupt narrative, 
and odd bits of familiar humour. The extreme 
remoteness of the period he deals with is against 
him in the case of this ponderous liveliness : for 
it is hard to stand (for example) learned friski- 
ness about events which led up to the accession to 
the French throne of Hugh Capet. And yet, 
there are little real pictures in that " History of 
Normandy and England " which nobody else but 
Mr. Carlyle could have made so picturesque. The 
death of the second Norse Duke of Normandy, 
William Longsword, by assassination, is one of 
these ; and if the reader gets over his first repug- 



English Historians. 63 

nance to the style, lie will be abundantly re- 
warded, we need not say, by tlie matter through- 
out the book. 

There is a strong personal originality of view 
about Palgrave's histories, more interesting to 
many tastes (our own among them) than that air 
of " the party" and "the school," which is felt 
unpleasantly in some excellent books. We should 
be somewhat puzzled to classify Sir Francis 
politically — to define him by any of those epithets 
which distinguish men's political opinions. He 
seems to study early ages in themselves, and 
for their own sakes, with less design than most 
writers, to draw from them arguments for one or 
other view of the age in which we live. But you 
must not fail to weigh carefully his important 
speciality — a recognition of what was done for 
modern institutions and society by those of the 
great Roman Empire, to the civilisation of which 
they succeeded. His whole account, too, of the 
early relations of England and Scotland is his 
own special creation, and worthy of particular 
remark — even though you should not relish, more 



64 A Course of English Literature. 

than most Scotsmen are found to do, his opinions 
on the mutual position of the two countries. But 
it is of course impossible, within our present 
limits, to do more than indicate the most con- 
spicuous points of remark about each writer ; and 
we must now proceed to other men. 

It would be, perhaps, useless to expect you to 
read each historian in the order we have men- 
tioned — taking up the first page of one only after 
concluding the last page of his predecessor. Such 
steadiness is rare, however desirable; and pro- 
bably you will think that of some historians it is 
only necessary to read parts — parts sufficient to 
give you an insight into their general tendency, or 
parts for which they are peculiarly qualified by 
special studies or advantages. 

We must warn you, however, against indulging 
this tempting opinion — -which throws a philoso- 
phical air over laziness — too far. All beginners 
should commence by reading books through, for 
how else will they acquire the judgment to decide 
in what cases it is sufficient to read parts ? The 
order, perhaps, does not so much matter ; and 



English Historians. 65 

there can be no harm — provided you closely attend 
to the subject — in passing from the account of a 
reign by Hume, to the account of it by Hallam, 
or from its history by Mackintosh to its history 
by Lingard or Sharon Turner. We are treating, 
in this chapter, of such historians as have dealt 
with the whole history of England, or with vast 
periods of it ; and the two last-mentioned remain 
to be commended to your attention. They both 
investigated anew our national annals ; and we 
need not say that this gives them a claim on your 
regard, such as compilations (with which we do not 
profess to deal) cannot pretend to. 

Dr. Lingard' s is the Koman Catholic history of 
England, and therefore indispensable to those 
who wish to read history in that wide spirit of 
sympathy which takes a little truth from every 
side — not for the sake of the side, but of the 
truth. Nobody is in the least danger of being 
made a Papist by Lingard, precisely because he 
knows that Lingard writes from the Romanist 
point of view. It was the worthy doctor's busi- 
ness, and his duty, to do justice to the cause of 



66 . A Course of English Literature. 

the church. The histories had all been from the 
other side before ; and indeed the very novelty 
gives a charm to the work. Besides, if anybody 
supposes that the early Catholic church, and 
the church as it had become at the time of the 
Reformation, were one and the same thing, he 
may give up all hope of ever understanding the 
subject. The very essence of the true historical 
spirit lies in the discriminating period from 
period, and the measuring each one by its own 
fair standard. We do not judge chivalry by the 
man in sham armour in the Lord Mayor's show ; 
nor any institution by the ugly sham result which 
may come from it in the changes of five hundred 
years. So, it is as well that we have a history 
determined to put the best face on one institu- 
tion, which we are too apt to underrate ; while 
who is likely to be misled by a respectable papist 
doctor about such a noble character as Luther? 
When we come to that chapter, and to the stupid 
old theory that Lutheranism all arose out of a 
squabble between Luther's religious order and 
some other, why, we chuckle and pass on. And 



English Historians. 67 

in any critical period we are always on our guard 
with Lingard ; as much as with a man holding a 
brief. Of course, he makes the worst of Henry 
the Eighth ; of course, he does his best for the 
Irish, who made the massacre of 1641 — though it 
was a shade or two worse than the doings at 
Delhi and Cawnpore. All that is understood and 
allowed for, and no man understands his own 
view till he has heard it well attacked by some- 
body else. Often that is the best thing that can 
happen to a man. 

Lingard's genius and style are by no means of 
the highest order. He is a clear-headed, per- 
spicuous, and agreeable writer, and that is all. 
His whole arrangement, as regards order, and so 
on, is excellent ; few books may be more handily 
referred to for a fact or a date. He wanted the 
vivifying imagination which belongs to the few ; 
and in his accounts of battles and negociations 
you feel that you are listening to the bookman, 
the scholar. But then this is a very common 
thing. History is written by learned solicitors, 
like Sharon Turner, or other worthy learned 

f 2 



68 A Course of English Literature. 

personages, now-a-days, and, of course, wants 
that fine smack of life which belongs to histories 
of events written by actors in events, such as 
several of the classical ones, for instance, or of 
the earlier ones of our own country. Sharon 
Turner, for example, of whose books every histori- 
cal reader must know something, and who spent 
his life in historical research, is unquestionably 
dull, chiefly because he had not the inherent spirit 
and vivacity to break through the associations of 
the antiquary and book-worm. And it is just 
because of this truth, true of so many men, that 
you must not confine your historical reading to 
what are called " Histories of England." These 
elaborate narratives, the sources of which are 
innumerable other narratives, are indeed indis- 
pensable, partly as abstracts, partly as guides. 
A few are great works of art, embodying the idea 
of a nation as a Greek statue does the beauty of 
a race. But real historical reading begins when 
the student has found his way to those sources of 
history recommended to him before, and some 
of which we shall say a little about presently. 



English Historians. 69 

Meanwhile, it still remains to ns (and will 
indeed be part of the task just mentioned) to 
treat of a few histories of special periods — not 
" Histories of England" so extensive in plan as 
those with which the present chapter has been 
occupied, but histories dealing with particular 
epochs — a most important class. We shall, then, 
take the opportunity of fulfilling our promise to 
classify the epochs into which the student should 
divide his reading. But, before approaching that 
office, we shall devote one chapter to those col- 
lateral aids to the u Study of English History," 
which our experience shows us to be needful to 
everybody who wishes to acquire such knowledge 
on a liberal scale. 




NO. IY. 

AIDS TO THE STUDY OF ENGLISH 
HISTORY. 



ET us suppose our faitKful reader 
to have gone through the " standard 
historians," with whom we have en- 
deavoured to put him in the way of getting 
acquainted. He knows the outlines — the general 
current of events — of the national story ; he has 
kept his note-book (a useful practice, only apt to 
supersede a right memory of things, if carried too 
far), and attended to dates, the line of succession 
to the Crown, the battles, revolutions, and other 
prominent land-marks on his way. Well, he 
certainly knows something, and by keeping an 
eye on the references in the authors we have 



Aids to the Study of English History. 7 I 

characterised, has put himself in the way of 
knowing a great deal more by-and-by. But the 
more he " takes stock" of his attainments, the 
less he will be satisfied with them. He will feel 
like a traveller (to use our former illustration 
again) who has been "seeing London" — who, to 
be sure, has visited the Tower, the Abbey, St. 
Paul's, and so forth, but who knows that of the 
mighty dwelling-place of two millions and a half 
of human beings like himself, he has seen but 
little. And then it is just the domestic, the 
personal, the social existence of his countrymen 
which all this historical reading has told him the 
least about. " So ' stagey,' too, most of these 
philosophical narrators are!" our friend will 
exclaim. Everybody, with them, walks in a set 
stride and speaks with a particular voice, as is 
the case with the traditional " Macbeths" and 
"Hamlets" of another class of gentlemen who 
profess to picture life. There is a certain melan- 
choly humour with which we review, as men, the 
notions we formed of long-dead heroes of past 
ages, as boys. Did we not, for instance, read that 



72 A Course of English Literature. 

story about King Canute and the waves — pro- 
bably with the help of an engraving in which a 
solemn old gentleman was sitting in an arm- 
chair — as it might be at Brighton, perhaps — and 
haranguing a handful of other old gentlemen, to 
all outward appearance on conchology or marine 
botany or other sea-sicle science ? What a con- 
ventional fogy he seemed ! — he, King Knut y a 
great, healthy, blue-eyed, Norse barbarian, who 
ruled England, Norway, and Denmark in an 
exceedingly rough fashion (not without a murder 
or two), whom the chronicler saw crying and 
kissing the altars in a Norman abbey, with a 
wild piety very different from genteel moralising 
indeed — who, in fact, can only be dimly conceived 
after reading Norse sagas, monkish chroniclers, 
&c. &c. — as different from modern histories as 
mead and hydromel from modern drinks. The 
conventionalism of history-writing now-a-days is 
become so flat as to drive many people from his- 
tory altogether. The late Mr. a-Beckett saw this, 
and wrote professedly "comic" histories to re- 
medy it. But this was perhaps worse ; for, first 



Aids to the Study of English History. 73 

of all, a nation's life is not a comic, but a very 
serious affair, sometimes varied by comedy, like 
private life, and that only for a time. And, 
secondly, the "comic" view brought to bear in 
those books was itself a conventional kind of 
modern comedy, and exposed to the same objec- 
tion of narrowness, as the conventional narrative 
and moralising which it was intended to ridicule 
and supersede. The reader, then, is still left to 
cast about for some way of realising historical 
doings to his imagination which shall make alive 
for him the events of which he will get little more 
than the external aspect in ordinary histories. 

Now, we have said already, that this is to be 
done, in the long-run, only by reading history in 
its sources, with a sympathetic spirit for the life 
of each age. But (leaving this to the reader's 
reflection for the time) our intention now is to 
point out some aids by which he may fill up that 
blank in his knowledge left by ordinary "standard 
history;" to recommend some books as com- 
panions to such history — to put him in the way 
of completing the outline of public events by filling 



74 ^ Course of English Literature. 

up the body of it with other knowledge illustra- 
tive of the life of England in the ages of which we 
assume him to have been just reading. By-and- 
by, all histories will do justice to this sort of 
knowledge — the silent life (so to speak) of by- 
gone times ; indeed, attempts have already been 
made — of which the " Pictorial History of Eng- 
land" is one of the best-known results. The 
student may consult that book with advantage — 
and should do so ; but it is in no sense a great 
book — being in truth only a kind of newspaper 
summary of English history in a common-place 
style, with more attention to social affairs than is 
common, and accompanied with " illustrations." 

To begin with, you have read, in the various 
men treated of in last chapter — perhaps in Sharon 
Turner, who is fuller than most — the "history" 
of the Anglo-Saxon period. Fill up, now, your 
conception of the events by some further infor- 
mation about the people and all belonging to 
them. The well-known book of Prichard, " Phy- 
sical Researches into the History of Mankind," 
will tell you much about the races, relationships, 



Aids to the Study of English History. 75 

and characteristics of the people who settled in 
Britain. Dr. Latham's "English Language" 
contains a summary of the conquest and colonisa- 
tion of the island by Germanic tribes — besides the 
information promised by its title. Mr. Kemble's 
work on the " Saxons in England" you must by 
no means pass over ; and you will be agreeably 
surprised to find how interesting it is ; indeed, 
there is no reason why, in the hands of any man 
with the right amount of knowledge, and of a 
cheerful, genial, manly spirit and style, such a 
subject should not be interesting. The local 
organisation of England, its self-government, its 
earliest laws, its social ranks and divisions — are 
matters which explain much that exists yet. 
Besides, the tendency of opinion now is towards 
the doctrine, that though the Norman Conquest 
destroyed the Saxon administration — dispossessed 
its governing aristocracy, and infused a new 
governing element into the kingdom — it did not 
affect its social organisation so much as was once 
thought. In fact, more land even remained in 
the old hands than the sweeping statements of 



J 6 A Course of English Literature. 

writers allow for. So that it becomes important 
to historical readers to know what that life was 
which the Conqueror found here, and which he 
evidently wished to understand, from the effort 
that he made in advanced age to acquire the 
native language. Within the last thirty years, 
much has been done on this subject, as you will 
have seen from Hallam and Palgrave, and may 
learn further in the works of Kemble, Thorpe, 
and Wright. Of course, the study may be pushed 
any length, as you will soon discover, but we do 
not pretend to make you learned in the matter, 
nor encourage you to talk as if you were. There 
is one standard of attainment for the savant or 
scholar, and one for those who only aim at being 
well-instructed Englishmen, who wish to be 
better fitted to work for their country by having 
a knowledge of its traditions. This we assume to 
be your case ; and remember that though only a 
few can be learned, every patient man may be 
sound, as far as he goes. 

Well, you have already read half-a-dozen ac- 
counts of the great event of 1066, which handed 



Aids to the Study of English History. jy 

over England to "William. You know that 
William ordered a General Survey of the country 
— a blue-book, in fact, as it has been justly called, 
famous under the name of Doomsday. People 
often hear that publication (it is published now) 
talked about, but don't read it, and cannot, in 
fact, without a special study. There is, how- 
ever — thanks to Sir Henry Ellis and his " Intro- 
duction " — a means of getting at what Mr. 
Carlyle would call the "heart of Doomsday;" 
and this " Introduction " of his (two volumes 
octavo) is just the kind of book which we mean 
by talking of the " aids " to historical study. It 
opens up to us the social England of the begin- 
ning of the twelfth century ; who held the land, 
and how much it was worth ; how many acres 
there were in each property, and how many living 
on it — free men, cottars, pig-drivers, slaves, or 
what not. All this has Sir Henry summarised 
for the benefit of those who like to know not only 
what the battles were at that epoch, but what 
sort of England this was to live in at the time. 
Unfortunately, for any age, this is just the most 



78 A Course of English Literature. 

difficult information to get, and such books as 
Sir Henry's are welcome accordingly. Another 
such work is one published at the end of last 
century — Sir Frederic Eden on the a State of the 
Poor." This was written about the time that the 
old poor-law system had got into such alarming 
disorder and corruption, and had drawn general 
attention to the subject. The first chapter gives 
many curious particulars about the state of the 
people down to the time of the Reformation ; and 
should be expressly read (no lengthy operation) 
accordingly. Strutt on " Manners and Cus- 
toms," with its queer plates, contains much 
matter about the life of past times. This kind 
of information is, for the most part, scattered 
up and down very variously, in county histories, 
in commentaries upon old plays, in the " Archse- 
ologia," and so forth. But we should advise 
you to beware how you fall into " Curiosity- 
Shop" literature, which is too much in fashion 
just now. It is very proper to consult Meyrick 
on Armour ', Planche or Fairholt on Costume, and 
the like, occasionally, because they help you to 



Aids to the Study of English History. 79 

realise the past, with which you are concerned. 
But to carry a bag about the thoroughfares of 
literature, crying " Clo' ! " is an ignoble pursuit ; 
though there are half a score of literati always 
busy in this way, picking up the oddities of his- 
tory—the gossip and scandal of third-rate periods 
— when they might be studying our great writers, 
the rise of our government, or the formation of 
the constitution. Before going — not into writers 
like Ellis or Eden, but into the gossips — we 
should recommend you more serious aids to the 
subject before us. Thus, though you should have 
no intention of studying the law, it will be as 
well to go through all that relates to constitutional 
history in Blackstone — for, without some know- 
ledge of the feudal system, nobody can possibly 
understand the origin of Parliaments in England, 
or, indeed, the formation of social life and ways 
of thinking in the country at this very hour. 
General sketches of the feudal system are endless. 
All comprehensive historians try their hands at it 
— like Robertson, for instance, who is as readable 
(though a little old-fashioned, and pompous, to 



80 A Course of English Literature. 

most tastes, now) as any of them. From Black- 
stone may be learned the old organisation of land 
tenure, and of ranks and dignities connected with 
it, which was the essence of the whole business. 
As the ancient — not the present — state of the 
law is what yon want, any old edition of the 
" Commentaries " will suffice you, and the book 
is common and cheap. We do not think that it 
will appear to you either difficult or dull. Like 
the old school of his profession, Blackstone had 
literary accomplishments ; and the tradition that 
he refreshed himself, during composition, with 
habitual port- wine, inclines one to see a certain 
grave geniality in his style. 

What makes our constitutional history more 
readable than antiquarian subjects generally, is 
that, from political causes, it has been constantly 
fought about. During our great civil war, both 
sides (instead of talking sansculotte nonsense) 
were eager to show that they had precedent and 
the past in their favour. One party brought forth 
and made the most of every case it could rake up 
of kingly prerogative ; the other, every case of 



Aids to the Study of English History. 8 1 

successful parliamentary resistance. Accordingly, 
they abused each other with a liveliness very 
refreshing in erudite inquiry. It is impossible 
not to grin, when the venerable Dugdale speaks 
of the people as a " confused rout " — with a large 
R. And we know that when somebody, during 
Cromwell's rule, reproached that hero, in an 
allusion to Magna Charta — he replied with a con- 
temptuous joke (involving a rhyme), which we, 
must not print here, though it is to be seen in no 
less dignified a quarter than the " History of the 
Rebellion," by Lord Clarendon. It may help to 
push you through " Brady on Boroughs" to see 
that Brady evidently hated a borough, with the 
gusto with which an ordinary man hates a rival 
or a dun. So that there is some excitement to 
be got in our literature, even out of such points 
as whether mesne-tenants voted in the county- 
courts for knights of the shire ; whether any body 
but a tenant-in-chief was originally a member of 
the great council of the realm — or why paying 
" scot-and-lot" was a qualification for the voter 
in one borough, and not in another. So late as a 



82 A Course of English Literature. 

few years before the Keform Bill, Allen, the 
author of a well-known treatise on the " Boyal 
Prerogative," used to write quite " slashing " 
articles on questions of this apparently dry nature 
in the "Edinburgh." They are more than once 
referred to by Mr. Hallam, and should be read, 
both for their substance and vivacity, by inquirers 
into our history. Early Scotch history — a still 
drier and obscurer matter — is peculiarly a field of 
lively war. Pinkerton — whose theory was that 
the Picts were Goths — thinks nothing of main- 
taining that a Celt is an ass. The Celtic school, 
accordingly, always treat Pinkerton like a pick- 
pocket. Such fights, on such subjects, irresistibly 
suggest a " mill " in the middle of Stonehenge : 
but, as certainly, they give a spice of wicked 
enjoyment to very dry subjects, which pleases the 
somewhat mischief-loving nature of mankind. 

But, indeed, " heavy " or not heavy, the Eng- 
lish antiquaries of our own or other generations 
are the real sources of our knowledge of the social 
history of the country. Any historian will tell you 
that " the Earls of Northumberland and West- 



Aids to the Study of English History. 83 

moreland raised an army, and marching south 
defeated " so-and-so at such a place ; and this is 
the historian's business, who of course goes on to 
state the consequences of such battle, which may 
have decided who was ultimately to govern Eng- 
land. But suppose you want (as any reader of 
active mind must surely want) to reproduce all 
that that little sentence implies and comprehends ? 
How did they raise an army ? — how was it armed 
and fed ? — what did it look like ? — what was the 
domestic life of those earls, and the degree of 
their cultivation? — and how did they and their 
tenants and labourers get on together? Here, 
much various knowledge is required to satisfy you ; 
and the historians proper only give this kind of 
knowledge (as Hume does, for instance) in little 
summaries at the end of the formal narrative. 
And here, accordingly, the antiquaries come in to 
your help — county historians, economists, gene- 
alogists, and all the rest of the tribe. 

Sometimes an antiquary of the superior kind 
deliberately attempts to use his knowledge for the 
purpose of producing whole pictures and scenes for 

g 2 



84 A Course of English Literature. 

our instruction. Thus, Sir Francis Palgrave (for 
whom we have already professed our great respect, 
and whose books on the " English Common- 
wealth," and "Normandy and England," are 
among the most learned of the day) has done 
this in a very moderate-sized interesting work, 
the " Truths and Fictions of the Middle Ages." 
There we find the life of England in the fourteenth 
century not only discussed, but (with far more 
than common ability) depicted ; and there, one 
can really form a notion what a county election 
was like ; what sort of a man a merchant was ; 
and what sort of a man a friar was. But generally 
this kind of knowledge is conveyed incidentally, 
and must be put together (like a picture in a 
puzzle) from bits. Take the case imagined in last 
paragraph — the war-march of two earls. Well, 
their county history, if it is at all decently done, 
will supply a great deal of matter such as you 
want, about the lands they held and who lived 
upon them, what rent they drew, what " common" 
the yeomanry had access to, and all that kind of 
thing, drawn from family papers to which the 



Aids to the Study of English History. 85 

writer has had access. County histories exist in 
dozens ; you may load waggons with them : life 
is not long enough to read them through. But 
if there is one of your own county, you had better 
make some acquaintance with it ; and knowledge 
about places you have seen (castles in the ruins 
of which you have hunted jackdaws, abbeys 
amidst the relics of which you have lounged on a 
summer holiday) — that kind of knowledge sticks. 
If there has been no enterprising man to ruin 
himself (as too often happens) in producing a folio 
about your own county, try one of the best of such 
local histories. Surtees's " Durham " holds the 
very highest rank in this way. Surtees was a friend 
of Sir Walter Scott's, and seized the spirit as well 
as the body of things past, for be wrote most 
admirable imitations of the ancient ballads. 
Another county history of value is Blomefield's 
" Norfolk," which is a wonderful repertory of 
ancient matter about Norfolk — matter of course 
more or less illustrative of all other counties. In 
Whitaker's " Craven," again, there are several 
documents about the Cliffords which make the 



86 A Course of English Literature. 

feudal polity quite intelligible; showing how, 
under leases short but liberal, the tenant was 
dependent, though without unkindliness, and just 
in the relation to his lord which insured his always 
being ready to follow his banner. The honour 
still attached to landed as distinct from other 
property, is only a tradition from early times, and 
it is surely worth while to know something of ages 
with which in this country (unlike others) the 
connection has never been broken. In fact, you 
cannot begin anywhere in our history, and say 
here an entirely new era begins. 

Along with the county histories there is another 
class of antiquarian books to be consulted — those 
which deal with the histories of the early English 
great families. It is probable that you will 
imagine that here we have imposed on you at last 
the " heaviest " portion of your labours. But it 
would be unfair to the older writers of " Baron- 
ages," and " Peerages " to class their productions 
with some " Peerages " of our day. The folios of 
Dugdale, the octavos of Collins, are really great 
compendiums of regular history. The pedigrees 



Aids to the Study of English History. 87 

are the least important part of them, for they 
clothe the skeleton (exhibiting the bone-work of 
connection and descent) with flesh and blood. 
They show you what every head of a great family 
did — whether he was for the king or against 
him — how he behaved to the church — what his 
services were in the wars — and how his family 
relationships and properties affected his policy, 
that is, affected the history of England. At 
leisure hours, if you have access to a large library, 
and that library contains the huge " Baronage " 
of the Garter-King Dugdale (which appeared in 
the time of Charles II., and "laid the foundation 
of our genealogical science," says Gibbon), you 
cannot do better than turn over his venerable 
leaves. This is the erudite Sir William Dugdale, 
of the " Monasticon " — that mighty series of 
folios which embodies the history of the religious 
houses of England. He was, indeed, what is 
called " a dungeon of learning." But then the 
dungeon is well-stored ; and what have you your 
intellect for, except it be to serve you as a 
" link ? " Carry your own light with you, and 



88 A Course of English Literature. 

use what you find. By the way, there can be no 
worse taste than to sneer at the amassers of any 
kind of learning because they are not so readable 
as Junius's " Letters." It is a mistake into 
which most men fall when very young, which the 
sensible drop early, and which the goose alone 
retains at mature years. 

Dugdale's " Baronage " is a dear and un- 
common book, but it is, of course, in large 
libraries. The " Peerage " of Collins (which 
belongs to the earlier part of last century) treats 
of families extant in his time only — a mere wreck, 
of course, of the body of Norman houses whose 
histories are recorded by his predecessor. It has 
always been considered a valuable work ; and 
what with extracts from " wills," &c, throws 
much light on ancient manners. You will meet, 
of course, in such books, various things which, 
belonging to the feudal system, require to be 
explained by the ordinary exponents of that 
system ; and, by all means, pass over nothing (in 
this department or elsewhere) without taking the 
trouble to find out what it means. Turn to 



Aids to the Study of English History. 89 

Halli welFs " Dictionary " for " archaic and pro- 
vincial words "—disused words — or such as are 
only found among the peasantry in remote 
counties. When you come to phrases like " right 
of free warren," " right of tumbril and gallows," 
" of fair and market," " assize of bread and 
beer," &c, you have not far to seek — not beyond 
a book like the old dictionary of Cowell — for a 
rational explanation of them. Books on antiqui- 
ties are plentiful, and one refers to the other ; so 
that, after being put in the way, you will easily 
find the road — if such is the bent of your taste — 
up to Selden and Spelman, Ducange and Mont- 
faucon. But it is not our business to conduct you 
there : only to show you how antiquities serve for 
the completion — literally, for the filling-up — of 
that sort of general notion of history which a 
student gets from going through " Histories of 
England" — ordinarily so called. The defect of 
these histories is the want of body and reality — 
a want that can only be supplied by the kind of 
reading which it has been the object of this 
chapter to recommend. Of course, such reading 



90 A Course of English Literature. 

can be conducted with any degree of profundity 
or of non-profundity. A student may neglect it 
altogether; but we have supposed, throughout, 
that we are writing to men really anxious to get 
a respectable degree of attainment, and that it 
would be safe to pitch our standard tolerably 
high. Besides, the variety implied in carrying on 
studies alongside each other, is really refreshing 
and stimulating. We said, at first, that we did 
not recommend the student to be too continuously 
occupied with one book. He may fairly go from 
Hume's account of Elizabeth to Miss Strickland's 
"Life'*' of her; then to Dugdale's " Baronage " 
for the Nevilles and Percys ; to Bishop Percy's 
^ Ballads " for the minstrelsy which celebrated 
the Northern Rising ; and to Sir Walter's " Kenil- 
worth " as belonging to the period. All that is 
necessary is, that even if the sweep be wider, some 
centre shall be meanwhile kept in the eye. 

It will be found further an advantage, as an 
aid in historical reading, to look wherever there is 
an opportunity at some of those great works of 
illustration where are found plates of the most 



Aids to the Study of English History, 9 1 

celebrated buildings of the country. The same 
remark applies to the case of maps ; for geography 
is closely connected with history, as is very 
strikingly shown in Dr. Arnold's " Lectures/' 
And a very zealous student may in these railway 
days easily bring his reading more home to him, 
by taking a " run " to some of the scenes of those 
events which we have dimly to fancy at second- 
hand from books. 




ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY AND 
OTHER BRANCHES OF LITERATURE, 

ACCORDING TO EPOCHS. 




HERE is nothing in which most writers 
on education are so particular as in 
the recommendation that one's studies 
should be systematic. They detest the desultory 
way of roving from subject to subject, and book 
to book, as tending to produce shallowness of in- 
formation, and to ripen nothing in a man except 
his conceit. Some great writers are indeed more 
indulgent on this point ; and Dr. Johnson thought 
that if you turned a youth loose into a library to 
browse according to his fancy, that was the like- 
liest course to make him learn, since he would 



History and other Branches of Literature. 93 

read what lie took pleasure in reading, and for 
that very reason would remember what he did 
read. The weight of authority is, however, .de- 
cidedly the other way. And, for our own parts, 
we strongly advise studying by plan — taking care, 
however, not to tie our student up too closely. As 
we have said, we would not limit him to one 
subject at a time, and yet we would have him take 
care that there was always a connection between 
the subjects in his own mind. The best connec- 
tion is the historic one, we think ; that is, an 
arrangement by which divers sorts of reading are 
related to each other chronologically. For ex- 
ample, as Herrick and Waller were both poets 
who lived during the Civil War, when could you 
better make their acquaintance than when reading 
about the Civil War? As Milton, again, was a 
Puritan, with all the characteristics of his party, 
his life and poems have a deep bearing on Puri- 
tanism, and may be most profitably viewed in 
that relation. As Cleaveland was the Cavalier 
satirist of the same age, there can be no better 
time to read him than when you are busy with the 



94 A Course of English Literature, 

doings of the very gentlemen who quoted his 
sharp epigrams over a tankard of home-brewed. 
This we call studying by epochs, and we submit it 
to your consideration for adoption, after that 
general course of history as a whole which we 
have already laid before you. It has this advan- 
tage, too, that it admits of being followed with 
considerable freedom. The order of time is the 
natural one; but still, if you took the Anne 
epoch before the Elizabethan one, instead of after 
it, there would be no harm done. All we want 
is, that you shall stick to one till you have come 
to know it below the surface ; but we don't much 
care with which one you commence. 

There is another choice open to the student in 
this matter. He may take an epoch and work on 
it as a whole, or he may take some great person 
of an epoch and work round him as a centre. If 
he is determined to know the Conquest, he may 
divide it into annals, beginning at a reasonable 
period before the absolute year of the battle of 
Hastings ; and so work away till he finds William 
dead and the Normans established. Or he may 



History and other Branches of Literature. 95 

make William's biography the basis of his studies, 
and view everything in its connection with that. 
Here, again, we do not dictate very sternly which 
course he should prefer, though we incline, with 
Mr. Fynes Clinton, to the latter; but we are 
certain that to select either, and adhere to it, will 
give definiteness to his studies. And deflniteness 
is what he wants. Beading is like any other part 
of the system of life ; it will run in the groove to 
which you accustom it. Once get in the way of 
reading in a special train, and with a special 
object, and the mind accustoms itself accordingly. 
Hence the advantage also of managing to asso- 
ciate particular hours with particular kinds of 
reading. If you have only two hours a day, be 
sure to assign each hour its special subject, and it 
will come as natural to you (there is nothing like 
a homely illustration) as your dinner. The order 
of the most regular man will be sometimes broken : 
a headache, a casual visitor, or what not, may 
destroy one evening ; but still the formed habit 
will tell on the whole twelvemonth. We cannot 
all be like the erudite Budeeus (Erasmus's great 



x/ 



96 A Course of English Literature. 

rival) who retired on his very wedding-day for 
three hours' reading ; and we don't want to be 
like the other gentleman, who, when his servant 
rushed into his study to say that the place was on 
fire, exclaimed, " Blockhead ! how often must I 
tell you that my wife attends to the affairs of the 
house ? " But we may imitate these great lumi- 
naries, so far as regularity is concerned, on a 
humbler scale. t dmAu 

Well then, assuming that the division by 
epochs is useful for purposes of regularity, let 
us sketch, first of all, the system on which we 
would advise the reader to make his division. 

Our history and literature may be broadly 
partitioned into — 

Epoch First : the Saxon Period. — The modern 
writers about this subject have been treated of — 
that is, the leading ones among them — before. 
Some foreign authors of our own day have eluci- 
dated the history of the time learnedly, and have 
been adopted into our historical literature by 
translation. We allude to such works as the 
" England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings" of 



History and other Branches of Literature. 97 

Lappenberg (translated by Thorpe), and the 
" Life of Alfred/' by Pauli. We do not profess 
to make our student an authority on literature, 
nor assume that he is ambitious of more than a 
sound general knowledge of each time. But 
much of the original material of early history 
is more accessible than it was. The " Saxon 
Chronicle " may be read in several versions — in 
that of Dr. Giles, for instance, in Bohn's "Anti- 
quarian Library ;" where also will be found " The 
Life of Alfred," by Asser, and many other his- 
torical works of olden times. Most of the 
" Chronicles," however, are still in their original 
Latin, which is one reason why that language 
deserves to be considered the most important lite- 
rary language of the world — for the materials it 
contains. Yet, Hoveden, William of Malmes- 
bury, and several others, are cheaply accessible 
now in English garb, and should be in all decent 
public libraries as a matter of course. The fabu- 
lous portions of these works are easily discernible ; 
the prodigies recounted may be ridiculed even by 
a dunce ; but when these old monks talk of ordi- 



98 A Course of English Literature. 

nary human transactions, from ordinary authority, 
they are marvellously like ourselves. The length 
any reader chooses to go in their study, is his own 
affair, and must depend on his tastes and oppor- 
tunities ; but we recommend him to give them a 
trial at all events. In the modern histories of 
England already treated of, the chronicles of each 
period are referred to in their different places ; and 
in going through Lingard or Sharon Turner, an 
eye should always be kept on the judgments they 
pronounce on their authorities. 

Epoch Second: the Feudal period. — In a com- 
prehensive way, this epoch may be defined as 
lasting from the Norman Conquest to the fall of 
the last Plantagenet king at Bosworth, in 1485. 
Of course, there were great changes during these 
four centuries ; and of course, also, their influence 
can be traced in all history since. But, still, 
those were the feudal times par excellence, and 
have a character of their own, distinct from that 
of the modern life which began with the Tudors. 
These four centuries comprise the Crusades, 
Magna Charta, the Barons' Wars, our invasions 



History and other Branches of Literature. 99 

of the Continent, the English Catholic Church 
and its rule, the influence of Chivalry, and the 
formation of the modern English language. 
During them the Norman and Saxon mingled; 
the old Norman baronage waned, and ceased to 
be distinctly Norman ; the influence of England 
as a Power made itself felt abroad; towns and 
commerce increased ; printing was discovered and 
imported among us ; the House of Commons laid 
the foundation of its future ascendancy. And 
yet, what gave its colour to all those generations 
was that feudal system which organised life, and 
the traces of which are still found in our insti- 
tutions and manners. Hence the propriety of 
classing it as an epoch under that name; and 
other conveniences for viewing it for purposes of 
study, as (to a certain degree) a whole. 

There are many special modern books on the 
ages comprised in our epoch second — more than 
we at all pretend to be properly acquainted with, 
and more than there is any necessity for any 
human being to read. A few notable ones may 
be particularised. Thierry's " Conquest " (of 

h 2 



ioo A Course of English Literature. 

which there is more than one English transla- 
tion) is well worth your perusal, being written 
with a spirit and vivacity altogether beyond those 
of most of our own books, and having had a 
marked influence on our literature during the last 
twenty or thirty years. To be sure, you must 
always remember that he hated the Normans ; 
and further, that it was his hobby to see Norman 
versus Saxon everywhere in our history, till he 
found them even in Cavalier and Roundhead — 
forgetting that the Roundheads were led by a 
Devereux, a Montagu, and a Grey. Still, how- 
ever, an eye for historical drawing is so rare, and 
a man's hobbies are so quickly found out by the 
reviews, that it would be mere nonsense to neg- 
lect a man like Thierry for fear of his prejudices. 
While busy with those distant ages — ages of 
" fierce war and faithful love " — when everything 
was intense: ferocity on one hand, piety on the 
other — the opportunity is good of perusing Mr. 
Carlyle's " Past and Present." The basis of this 
celebrated work is the chronicle of an eastern 
counties monk of the twelfth century, and out of 



History and other Branches of Literature. 101 

this our contemporary has evoked one of the most 
remarkable visions of a bygone era of history ever 
produced by literary genius. Yet, having taken 
as his groundwork a real story, there is a solidity 
about the whole which is even more delightful 
than its imaginativeness. At this point, we 
would warn you to be very moderate in the 
article of historical novel reading. In nine cases 
out of ten, an historical novel is either a dream 
or a bore. But there is a class of readable works, 
which your pedant only passes altogether by — 
works not of fiction, yet still purposely intended 
to be amusing. Such are the " Lives of the 
Queens " by Miss Strickland, where (though the 
historical philosophy is not very deep) a number 
of particulars is gathered together, and employed 
in a piquant and agreeable way. These kind of 
books fill up the long tapestry of history with 
little bits of detail which give human interest to 
it, like the hawk on Harold's wrist, or the dogs 
following him, in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. 
By the way, you should glance at the engravings 
of that memorable piece of needlework (once so 



102 A Course of English Literature. 

confidently attributed to the Conqueror's Queen), 
in Ducarel's " Norman Antiquities," or else- 
where. 

Whatever the importance of these primaeval 
times, however, we cannot expect any hut a few 
to take much interest in their historical or other 
literature. Some works illustrative of their social 
state were mentioned in No. IY. ; and few keen 
readers, we suppose, but will like to know 
something of their chroniclers, one of the most 
interesting of whom, Matthew Paris, is in the 
English collection of Mr. Bohn. Froissart — 
greatest of chroniclers — has been three times 
translated into our language. Chronicle-writing 
reached its acme in him. His next great suc- 
cessor was a historian. This marks a well-known 
phase in literary history, when men began to 
philosophise, in modern fashion, on public events. 
The antique monks made a few straightforward 
moral reflections on incidents : if a wicked baron 
fell from his horse and was killed, they took care 
to mark the punishment, and so on. As for 
Froissart, he has nothing either of monk or 



History and other Branches of Literature. 103 

philosopher about him. He is a fine, pictorial, 
easy-going gentleman, with a real dramatic eye 
for narrative, and a very engaging sincerity 
and cordiality of disposition; so that he reflects 
the most gorgeous age of feudalism (that of 
Edward III. and his son) as innocently as clear 
water ; and that is all. The sameness, however, 
makes him tiresome, if read too much at a time. 

It was during this epoch that our English 
literature first began to dawn. It is hardly 
possible to fix any time when there was none ; for 
there are fragments of song and ballad belonging 
to the remotest age of feudalism ; and the re- 
mains of the Walter Mapes school (contemporary 
with Henry II.) indicate a considerable intellec- 
tual activity in the twelfth century. But we 
have not to deal now with relics lying out of the 
beat of the ordinary student. The " Vision of 
Piers Ploughman " maybe left to the antiquaries ; 
and few will care to- meddle with anything that 
is earlier than Chaucer. The venerable Geoffrey 
is most properly read in connection with the age 
of which he has left such vivid delineations. In 



104 -^ Course of English Literature. 

fact, it may be said of his " Canterbury Tales," 
that in them we first make the real acquaintance 
of our ancestors — their personal acquaintance, in 
their various classes. It is obvious, therefore, 
that his poetry has a direct connection with our 
history, and that by taking the two together you 
make them illustrate each other. Geoffrey will 
come before us again in our notice of English 
poetry, and for the present we are only concerned 
with his historical position. That, in writing for 
the court and aristocracy of the generation before 
the Wars of the Roses, Chaucer should have laid 
the foundation of an English popularity, is a 
curious proof of the unity into which England 
had been early welded. To the age after him 
belonged Caxton, the printer, whose biography 
by Mr. Charles Knight deserves to be read as 
a pleasant record of the life of a man who in- 
troduced the most important of modern disco- 
veries into this country. Nearly every work he 
printed, however, was a foreign production, show- 
ing how little we were recognised as having done 
in that way. The long interval between Chaucer 



History and other Branches of Literature. 105 

and any writer of similar excellence of genius, 
lias been often remarked ; and our literature first 
became rich, abundant, and of transcendant im- 
portance, during — 

Epoch Third: the Tudor Period. — This fills up 
the space between 1485 and 1603, and includes 
names which are still unrivalled, and are likely 
to be unrivalled for ever. The accession of the 
Tudor s — after a war which had destroyed the 
Plantagenets, permanently weakened the old 
nobility, and disposed the country to acquiesce in 
a strong settled government — marks the begin- 
ning of the modern era. Great social changes 
distinguished the whole of that time, and under- 
laid the great events on the surface of affairs. 
Bacon's " History of Henry the Seventh" will 
guide you to these, and prepare you for compre- 
hending the following reigns, one of which — the 
Elizabethan — will ever be memorable for its lite- 
rary development. It was not that the Tudors, 
as a family, had more regard for letters, naturally, 
than the Plantagenets, who (as Godwin observes 
in his " Life of Chaucer ") uniformly favoured 



106 A Course of English Literature. 

them. The country by its own development had 
passed into the stage where literature arises 
among all races capable of it. Printing — the 
spread of the classics — travel to foreign countries 
— and the absence of home disorders — these were 
the conditions which favoured the growth of let- 
ters. The genius for them had been in the race 
all along, of course, and had played through the 
national life in other channels — in song, in action, 
in domestic manners and sports, in the church, 
and most notably of all in Chaucer. 

The " History" of the Tudor period, we need 
scarcely say, is all but endless ; and the later you 
come down in your reading, the more books 
thicken upon you, of course. Unfortunately, we 
have not by any means the most copious records 
of the most important transactions ; nay, litera- 
ture teases us rather by arranging it just the other 
way ! All that is really known of Chaucer — nay, 
even of Spenser — is but a drop compared with 
what is preserved about Foote the wag, or Ste- 
phen Duck the scribbler, of the last century. 
Bacon's " Henry the Seventh" is a trifle in size, 



History and other Branches of Literature. 107 

compared with every other history or so that 
leaves the weary printer in our own age. To 
make up for it, the proportion of books worth 
reading is no larger now than three centuries 
since ; and if real works of art or real works of 
learning are your only care, decent industry will 
still keep you abreast of the flow of the English 
stream of intellect — a consoling fact to know ! 
We are still in want of good modern histories of 
England during the Tudor period — books which 
would be of more real use to you than those 
general histories which we assume you to know. 
The growth of the Constitution is fully discussed 
by Mr. Hallam, with the old calm severity of 
Whig criticism, which all reading men are fami- 
liar with. The favourable side of Henry the 
Eighth and his reign, may be seen in Mr. Froude 
— a Carlylian with unpopular heroes. We do 
not venture to decide between him and those who 
deny his conclusions and dispute his facts ; who 
say that the labourer did not then earn what was 
equivalent to twenty shillings a week of the 
money of our day ; or that he exaggerates Harry's 



108 A Course of English Literature. 

abilities and winks at his crimes. But as Mr. 
Froude is a man of genius, and has investigated 
the facts anew, with the aid of state papers (the 
gradual employment of which, by the way, will 
modify all our modern historical writing), and 
has, moreover, no motive for being dishonest, we 
cannot venture to pass him by. Elizabeth's 
reign has been illustrated by heaps of books ; 
the " Annals" of Camden (of which there is an 
English version, of course), the " State Papers" 
of Murdin and Haynes, the " Memoirs" of Birch, 
none of them books that are found out of libraries 
of the superior order, and none that are any 
way "pleasant" to read. Works, we repeat, 
thicken terribly upon us now ; and, if life is short, 
the reading part of life is shorter. Perhaps the 
best advice we can give ingenuous youth is to 
read what they have time for, thoroughly, note- 
book in hand, and memory on the alert. Draw 
up a table of your period — with columns for dates, 
and events, and persons — that you may have a 
bird's-eye view of the whole before you. Above 
all, read all the contemporary matter you can 



History and other Branches of Literature. 109 

possibly manage. " Bacon's Letters," for ex- 
ample, in Elizabeth's and in her successor's 
time ; and if there is a library where you have a 
chance, consult the " Parliamentary History," 
and "State Trials" as you go along; and the 
correspondence of great personages, as in the 
"Boyal Letters" of Ellis or Halliwell. It is 
with periods as with places, the man who has 
read the contemporary matter has been at the 
period, so to speak. What " description," even 
the best, is so pleasing as your own memory of 
Kenilworth, say, or Ely Cathedral, or a bit of 
sea-coast ? 

The literature, again, of epoch third is matter 
for the reading of years ; and we assume all along 
that reading is not to be the occupation of our 
reader's life. What is most worth his care — of 
the Tudor period — is its poetry ; above all, we 
need not say its dramatic poetry. Our prose had 
not yet formed itself, though it began to do so in 
Sidney, and though there is something very im- 
pressive in the pith and dignity of Bacon, whose 
writings, however, rather belong to the reign of 



no A Course of English Literature. 

James. But the Elizabethan poetry is still our 
highest, and that for loftiness of aim as well as 
fineness of insight. Besides all the greatness 
which belongs to Shakspeare's genius, whether 
in comprehensiveness or variety, his language is 
wonderfully modern in its happiest parts, and his 
snatches of lyric song are unsurpassed to this 
hour. He is the only man of that fertile time 
who is not at all out of fashion ; for even Spenser 
has suffered by his antiqueness both of form and 
manner ; and of Ben Jonson's dramas a few only 
can be said to survive to-day. We must distin- 
guish between being famous and being read, 
though in ordinary talk they are often confounded. 
But the poets will be duly reviewed presently by 
themselves ; and our business now is with the 
grouping of our studies. We come to — 

Epoch Fourth ; the Period from 1603 to the Res- 
toration. — Within a few years of the famous 
Elizabethan reign, our dramatic literature ceased 
to be so prominent. The survivors of the genera- 
tion died away. This marks a new era in our 
letters ; and there was also a new era at hand in 



Histonj and other Branches of Literature. 1 1 1 

our history. A convenient division, therefore, 
may be made, which shall bring both within an 
epoch, dating from the time when the first Stuart 
ascended the throne to the time when the third 
Stuart was restored after his exile. 

The interesting points for historical study during 
this period are — 

1. The growth of Puritanism and of political 
re-action from the Tudor despotism in James's 
reign, both accelerated by James's own weakness 
of character, and by the absence of any war to 
carry off the national energy. 

2. The Civil War. This may be studied with 
Charles or Cromwell for the central figure of 
interest, according as the reader's sympathies go. 

Here, again, we have to say that the number 
of books is " endless ;" but we particularly com- 
mend the following to the young historical reader : 
— " The Letters and Speeches of Cromwell," by Mr. 
Carlyle ; the work of D'Aubigne (translated some 
years back) on Cromwell ; Guizot's " English 
Revolution" (also translated); Godwin's " Com- 
monwealth" (from the republican point of view 



ii2 A Course of English Literature. 

this is written) ; and Forster's " Lives of British 
Statesmen." These are all sound and valuable 
modern books, in which the transactions of the 
Civil War (with a retrospect, of course, into what 
was most important in James's reign) are ex- 
amined, with all the aid of subsequent experience 
and of modern ideas. They will lead you, directly, 
to the original sources (the letters and speeches of 
Oliver are important original sources) of the his- 
tory of that memorable struggle. And here we 
may remark, that great crises like that of 1640- 
1662 are pre-eminently worth studying, and should 
be studied, at the sacrifice even of other subjects. 
In such times, men and ideas leap to the front, 
and become visible and tangible in action, in a 
way that cannot ordinarily be the case ; and the 
whole character of a nation is lighted up — so to 
speak — for our inspection, by the fires of the very 
tumult that it is raising. Of course it follows, 
too, that the record of such a period is ample and 
abundant. The actors on different sides give 
their different versions of the events in which 
they have taken a part ; so that, for the history 



History and other Branches of Literature. 113 

of our Civil War, we have memoirs and narratives 
in plenty. There is Lord Clarendon — king's 
servant and Cavalier, and a beautiful writer — 
whose characters of the great personages of 
the war have been happily compared by Horace 
Walpole to the portraits of Vandyke. There is 
Lucy Hutchinson, a high-minded Puritan lady, 
with her story. There are many more ; and the 
truth is attained by comparing them. But this 
is not all. One effect of the Civil War was to set 
thorough journalism going in England, and to / 
give an immense stimulus to pamphleteering. So 
that the collateral aid which may be got for the 
history of the period is immense — so immense 
that the mine by general consent has not been 
half-worked. But for the remainder of our re- 
marks on this and for the succeeding epochs, we 
must refer the patient reader to No. VI. 





_,~ -"""^W^ 



VL 




THE DIVISION INTO EPOCHS. 

EPOCH FOUETH : THE PERIOD FROM 1603 TO THE 
RESTORATION (RESUMED). 

S the seventeenth century laid the foun- 
dations of our modern political condi- 
tion — the revolution of 1688 being, in 
fact, made possible by the Civil War— so it laid 
the foundation of our modern literary style. The 
prose of the Elizabethan reign, and of the reign 
of Charles I., is as different from ours as the 
dresses then worn. It is rich and stiff, like cloth 
of gold. Familiar and easy prose began with 
Dry den and Cowley ; and was probably the result 
of the general break-up of the surface of life by* 
the great movement of the century. All such 



The Division into Epochs. 115 

phenomena are connected together, as we have 
often said. Bacon's new philosophy was an intel- 
lectual revolution, and was the forerunner of 
the industrialism and development of physical 
science, which give its peculiar colour to our 
own modern England. Bacon was a young man 
most of the Elizabethan time, and gained his 
chief advancement, and issued his chief works, 
under James I. On the whole, he is the most 
important prose writer in the literature of this 
country — the companion-figure to Shakspeare in 
its pantheon. Though, in his personal career, an 
unquestioning supporter of the absolutism of 
James — historically, his great mind represents 
that spirit of enlarged inquiry which made such 
an absolutism impossible in this country. How 
curious, when we remember this, to read such 
passages in his " Letters " as those where he says 
that he will be "as ready as a chess-man to go 
wherever his Majesty's royal hand shall place me," 
or where he talks of his Majesty's " subjects" — 
"for I like not the word people!" The last of 
these expressions gives a curious glimpse of James's 

1 2 



n6 A Course of English Literature. 

political views, and shows us what disgust the 
report of them must have spread in a country 
which had never tolerated despotism, except 
during periods when the despot really chose to 
undertake popular tasks. But with all this abso- 
lutist talk and action, James undertook nothing 
that could have brought him popularity ; or, 
when he did, as in the expeditions of the last years 
of his reign, they ended unfortunately. Few 
things are more curious, and in a certain way 
more melancholy, than to watch chance after 
chance of making his line popular, slip away 
through the hands of this " anointed pedant," as 
Bolingbroke calls him. 

The point, then, to keep one's eye on in James's 
reign is the ripening of all things towards the 
crisis which overwhelmed Charles. Bacon's " Let- 
ters " fall within the original materials for this 
epoch, and form a kind of introduction also to the 
study of Bacon himself. The civil is quite as 
remarkable as the philosophical side of that won- 
derful man; and he who should read his " His- 
tories," " Letters," and "Essays," without med- 



The Division into Epochs. 117 

dling with the " Novum Organum" at all, would 
probably cany away as high an opinion of bis 
greatness as be could well form. Many young 
men, we suspect (with the ordinary disrelish for 
serious reading which the too rich growth of our 
light literature breeds), underrate the attractive- 
ness of Bacon's writings. But the truth is, that 
he is — apart from his depth — one of the most 
brilliant of our authors; abounding in wit and 
fancy. These qualities were commoner, however, 
in the high literature of that age than they are in 
our own ; and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion 
that completely-developed individuals were also 
commoner then. The social history of the epoch 
under review has been but scantily done justice 
to, as yet. Lord Clarendon's portraits in, his 
" Rebellion" give one a vivid notion of the men 
who rose for or against Church and Crown. But 
memoirs (such as the French excel in) are not so 
well done amongst ourselves as might be wished. 
Miss Aikin and Captain Jesse have illustrated the 
times of which we are speaking. Isaac Disraeli 
has put the best face on the character of James 



1 1 8 A Course of English Literature. 

and the cause of Charles, in special works. And 
there are several modern essays and biographies 
besides, which may be read with advantage, when 
you are occupied with the period. While making 
acquaintance with Lord Bacon (whose philosophy 
will be treated of in a special chapter) Lord 
Campbell's " Life" and Lord Macaulay's " Essays" 
should be perused, but not by any means im- 
plicitly relied upon. The world has not yet had 
an adequate discussion of Bacon's character 
from the most charitable point of view ; nor is 
Macaulay's wholesale censure of all philosophy 
but Bacon's to be accepted without reserve. 

Bacon died in 1626. Hobbes (who carries on 
the line of English philosophy during the epoch) 
was then a young man, and his philosophy — like 
that of his predecessor— had its special historical 
J relation to his age. His English style is more 
modern in character than Bacon's. His specula- 
tive absolutism in politics had its place as a 
counterpoise to revolution ; being curiously coin- 
cident with that deep-seated respect for order 
which — visible in some shape through all the civil 



The Division into Epochs. 119 

wars — made the English people accept Cromwell's 
government with something like cheerfulness, and 
bring back the second Charles after his death, 
with more than enthusiasm. You will not fail, 
while thinking of these transactions, to recognise 
that same noble and hearty respect for order, and 
precedent, and tradition, which distinguishes our 
revolution from later ones. It is not a difference 
in this point or that point, this phase of the move- 
ment or that phase ; it is a difference in the whole 
character, life, and mode of thinking of the gene- 
ration which carried the Revolution out ! . . . No 
reader of this course, we trust, needs to be told 
that we do not think that " one generation is just 
the same as another," &c. — a view equally at 
variance with sacred and profane history, though 
frequently broached by Cockney cynics. Why 
one age is more religious, one more poetical, one 
more adventurous than another, and so forth — why 
the "spirit of the age" should sometimes take 
one turn and sometimes a different turn — is 
wrapped in profound mystery. We see the con- 
trasts ; we do not see the causes, at least not the 



120 A Course of English Literature. 

final causes, though we do see — and may trace a 
sequence in — the changes. There is a philosophy 
now which is beginning to " explain" all history ; 
but as yet, it must be admitted, with very imper- 
fect success ! When, for example, in following 
the great movement of our Epoch Fourth, you 
find Puritanism in its earliest shape superseded 
by Presbyterianism, and that by Independency, 
certainly you can understand how the conditions 
and events of succeeding years favoured such 
change ; but an unanswerable " why" awaits you 
if you would penetrate to the bottom, and ask, 
wherefore should all these changes have been? 
Indeed, the mystery which underlies history, after 
reason has done its best to explain everything, is 
one of the chief pleasures — though a strange and 
awe-inspiring one — of the study. 

But to return. Philosophy, we say, in this 
epoch, is represented by Hobbes — continuing the 
line of Bacon. His political scheme of absolute 
monarchy answers to the re-action after civil war; 
and his moral philosophy — based on the selfish 
view of human nature — made a strong impression 



The Division into Epochs. 121 

on English society, as constituted after the Res- 
toration. This is all that is necessary to say of 
Hobbes, at present : that is, in his merely histori- 
cal relation. The greater plainness and homeli->/ 
ness of his style, as compared with Bacon's (which 
is rich and imaginative), harmonises with the 
general change, by which, as social life has grown 
less feudal, it has everywhere grown more simple 
in ornament. 

Poetry during Epoch Fourth of our arrange- 
ment is represented by the great name of Milton. 
Where he is viewed in his historical relations (our 
only object just now) he ranks as the poet of the 
Puritans — the companion-figure to Cromwell. It 
was not, indeed, till after the Restoration that he 
produced "Paradise Lost;" but that is a mere 
accident — he had been preparing for it all his life, 
and in his old age he " dwelt apart," a stranger 
in spirit to the new generation. Historically, he 
represents, — 

1. Puritanism in its sublimity and seve- 
rity. 

2. The learning which was one of the chief 



122 A Course of English Literature. 

characteristics of the age of James, in which he 
was born. , , 

3. The natural vein of poetry in the English 
blood, which he inherited more richly than any 
man of his time, helping to polish and sweeten 
also our poetic language. 

When we remember that " Comus" belongs to 
1634, and "Lycidas" to 1637, and that the 
"Allegro" and "Penseroso" were published in 
1645, Milton appears among the very earliest 
writers of that species of poetry which has long 
survived the poetic dramas, which we no longer 
produce. His book last-mentioned made no im- 
pression on England for many years, and hence 
inferior writers like Waller, who were more 
popular, occupy so prominent a place in our 
literary history. But if Waller was inferior to 
Milton, he was a very charming poet for all that. 
There is scarcely anything more tender than his 
" Go, lovely Eose," in the language, and a cer- 
tain poetic epigram marks his minor pieces — for 
instance, the " Lines on a Lady's Girdle," which 
is perfectly classical. Cowley and Herrick belong 



The Division into Epochs. 123 

to the same generation. The elaborate wit and 
recondite allusion of Cowley are forgotten now. 
But Herrick's delicious lyrical richness makes his 
" Hesperides" still popular, and his " Anacreon- 
tics" are at once more refined and gayer than any 
similar things since. The age of Charles I. was 
indeed much more naturally poetical than any 
which followed, down even to Byron's time. The 
great popular men of the Bestoration were for the 
most part wits — those of Anne's reign, moralists ; 
in fact, the Civil War generation were the con- 
necting links between the romantic, poetical 
Elizabethans, and the men of the world who suc- 
ceeded to themselves. They united something of 
the qualities of both. Hence we can understand 
what Swift has said, that " the peaceable part of 
Charles the First's reign was the politest age 
which England ever knew." Lord Falkland 
would be less pedantic than Sir Philip Sydney, 
yet would retain the learned colour of that breed 
of gentlemen. Waller was certainly more familiar 
and easy in style than predecessors of his class of 
poetry — yet he is more freshly poetical, and was 



124 -4 Course of English Literature. 

probably more stately in manners also, than tbey 
who came after him. It was a transition age 
from the last phase of feudalism to the first phase 
of the modern social life of England. 

The chief value of what is called " light litera- 
/ ture," is the illustration it affords of these social 
changes — changes reflecting the graver alterations 
of each time, but melting into successive lines of 
character so subtly and delicately, that it is not 
easy to define their limits with accuracy. It 
would require a very searching criticism to point 
out all the differences — and what they indicate — 
between Tom Nash the wag, and Tom Brown 
the wag. Yet one feels, somehow, very vividly, 
in their trifles, that a change had come over the 
country from the sixteenth to the seventeenth 
centuries. 

In descending the stream of time in this way, 
the student finds the material for a personal and 
familiar knowledge of historical men accumulating 
largely upon him. During what we have described 
as the feudal epoch, we find it almost impossible 
to get detailed and curious information about any 



The Division into Epochs. 125 

personages below the very highest. But as lite- 
rature spreads, we have letters, anecdotes, gossip, 
autobiographies, and the like, so that we can 
realise the times better to our imagination. One 
effect of this is, perhaps, to make us overrate the 
importance of particular times and men, and to 
induce us to throw back the unreported, unrepre- 
sented epochs into a mental distance beyond our 
sympathy. And it is easy to fall, also, into 
another mistake — that of an over- weening value 
for mere personal gossip. After what we have 
said before, in our remarks on historical writing, 
nobody will accuse us of underrating the import- 
ance of detail to the historian. But, after all, we 
must not read only for the kind of pleasure which 
one expects in a comic novel. So we advise the 
student of the epoch before us to fix his eye on 
its great and serious events, and to keep very 
subordinate his curiosity about that court scandal 
of which there is plenty to be had. How King 
James swilled Greek wines and slobbered over 
his favourites with maudlin tears — how Bucking- 
ham, the founder of the Villiers family, married 



126 A Course of English Literature. 

his relations into powerful houses at the expense 
of the kingdom — the squibs on old Oliver's nose, 
and the silly stories which would make out his 
family only to be brewers — these kind of things 
have a sort of value, no doubt, but a too exclusive 
attention to them is below the real dignity 
which history (like all high arts) certainly has. 
By all means, read books like Fuller's "Wor- 
thies ;" the " Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury" 
by himself; or Lord Brooke's " Life of Sir Philip 
Sidney;" but leave most of the historical light 
literature of the times to professed collectors of 
antique trifles — a numerous body always. 

We may add here, by the way, that we have 
now portraits of the great or noted men of our 
epochs. An authentic portrait has a kind of 
biographical value, and the reader who has access 
to a good library will do well to examine the 
stately volumes of Lodge. 

Let us now proceed to 

Epoch Fifth: From the Restoration, 1660, to 
the Revolution, 1688. — The question at issue during 
this epoch was what the nature of the English Con- 



The Division into Epochs. 127 

stitution should be — how far the monarchy had 
profited by the lessons of the Civil War : and the 
question was settled on the popular side, chiefly by 
the personal character of two successive brothers 
— Charles II. and James II. That, after a contest 
like that of the Civil War, a despotism could have 
lasted in England, is indeed impossible. But 
had these two kings been better kings, and, above 
all, sound Protestants, there would have been no 
1688; there would have been a stronger monarchy 
in this country, involving a better administration ; 
our commercial and manufacturing activity would 
have grown up just the same : if the Crown would 
have been more grumbled at, the aristocracy would 
have been less so ; and the democratic movement 
(inevitable in any case) would have had, we 
think, a less bitter social character. These, how- 
ever, are mere " if 's," though the student will 
do well to remember that important as is the 
instruction to be learned from what has actually 
been, we ought not to acquiesce too readily in the 
Fatalism which assumes that nothing else could 
have been, since speculation, though helpless in 



128 A Course of English Literature. 

affecting the past, may have an influence on our 
action in the future. . . But these questions involve 
philosophical problems rather beyond our scope 
on this occasion. 

The historical spectacle, we say, of Epoch Fifth, 
is the decline of a dynasty, which, restored with 
an enthusiasm indicating the deepest monarchical 
sentiment among our ancestors, had not profited 
by its misfortunes. The points for the reader of 
history are — 

1. The unfortunate attitude of the nation to 
foreign states. Under the Commonwealth, we 
had beaten Holland and defied Spain, and had 
enjoyed the respect of all Powers. France rose, 
in the new state of things, to a height too great 
for the honour of Europe — a height provoking 
the wars afterwards waged against her by this 
country. 

2. The ecclesiastical struggles — at home, be- 
tween the Establishment and the Dissenters ; in 
Scotland, between the English and Scottish forms 
of church government, a distinction which, from 
the first, has profoundly affected the whole rela- 



The Division into Ej^ochs. 129 

tions of the two countries. This branch of the 
history of the time connects itself with such 
interesting biographies as those of Penn, Bunyan, 
and Viscount Dundee, and with the colonisation 
of America. The student will not fail to remark, 
that from Ealeigh's time, and that of the early 
Puritans downwards, the noblest colonisation was 
inspired by poetic adventure or religious and 
political zeal. The earliest is also the best element 
in the history of America. 

3. The renewed political movement typified by 
the figure of Algernon Sydney. 

4. The social changes. The Plague and the 
Fire. The effect of the Civil Wars in ruining 
families and making property pass into new 
hands. The influence of France on the higher 
society of England. 

In reading of these events, the student begins 
to have the advantage of Lord Macaulay's history. 
As we mean to have a special chapter on con- 
temporary writers by-and-by, we shall defer 
everything but our general advice of caution in 
the perusal of Lord M. — for the present The 



130 A Coarse of English Literature. 

most famous original historian of this period is, 
of course, Burnet, whom Tories attack and Whigs 
defend, and who will continue to be attacked and 
defended for generations to come. His history, 
far inferior to Clarendon's as a work of literature, 
has, in common with it, that sort of attraction 
which belongs to the narratives of actors in the 
scene. This was its attraction to Charles Lamb, 
who cared so little for " standard " books. And 
it is the same dramatic charm which gives to 
Pepys' " Diary " the great popularity it enjoys 
as a record of the time of Charles II. Eespect 
for the individual who writes is not necessarily 
felt in either case ; but so strong is the " touch of 
nature," that all the world is interested by a man's 
bona fide exposition of himself. Pepys' "Diary" 
is all but unique as a specimen of this, and hence 
its reality. The distance of time mellows what- 
ever ought to be offensive about the man ; and 
there the man is preserved (like a dead body in 
certain soils) as like as life. His greedy self- 
seeking, his little bits of dishonesty, his sly, 
quiet under-current of sensuality, are all there, 



The Division into Epochs. 131 

with touches of vanity which we should laugh at 
and despise in a living person. But the age is so 
completely past, and the self-exposure is made 
with such a queer naivete, that we are never 
without a kindly sort of feeling towards Pepys, 
in whose pages, as it were in a museum, the 
people he lived amongst are bodily exhibited. We 
need scarcely add that his " Diary " is one 
which the student should read by all means ; and 
whether he proposes going deeper into this epoch 
or not. Evelyn's " Diary," belonging to the same 
age, is the work of a fine-minded and learned 
gentleman — certainly a most superior man to 
Pepys ; yet will never have such an attraction for 
the general world — so potent is the charm of that 
homely realism, which Pepys represents in 
history and De Foe in fiction. 

The great literary man of the generation was 
the memorable Dryden. If Milton was of the 
earlier part of the century, and only accidentally 
related to the new race of the Kestoration, 
Dryden was their representative, and suffered 
from the fact. His great mind and his good 

k2 



132 A Course of English Literature. 

heart place him far above the reach of deprecia- 
tory criticism, and leave him only open to the 
kindly pity and sympathy which both his life and 
his writings require. Compared with Milton and 
Shakspeare, he is " of the earth earthy." It was 
a less creative period in literature, a period rather 
of- masterly, able, brilliant men, than of high- 
aspiring, far-reaching geniuses, such as those of 
the earlier times. Accordingly, little of Dryden 
lives now — little, that is, compared with the 
quantity he wrote. His plays are all but for- 
gotten ; his splendid satires are injured by their 
temporary character and the amount of illustration 
they require. Perhaps his noble ode, " Alexan- 
der's Feast," is his surest hold on us and our 
posterity, and that we think no time can injure. 
But the student must carefully acquaint himself 
with the best of his other productions, if only 
for the sake of the poet's historical place in our 
literature. No man ever did more than Dryden 
to popularise literature amongst us. He was our 
earliest popular critic in poetry, one of the 
formers of our language and style, and the most 



The Division into Epochs. 



133 



influential of the predecessors who were also the 
models of Pope. Like a beautiful obelisk serving 
for a landmark, Dryden is doubly valuable — 
valuable in himself and by his own attractions ; 
useful for the significance of his place in our 
literary history. 






VII. 

THE DIVISION INTO EPOCHS. 

EPOCH FIFTH : — FEOM THE RESTORATION, 1660, TO 
THE REVOLUTION, 1688 — RESUMED. 

RYDEN, we say, is the most dis- 
tinguished man of letters of this 
epoch. After Dryden, in point of 
rank, comes Butler, whose " Hudibras " appeared 
in 1663-1664, and at once acquired popularity. 
It is the Cavalier comic epic, as " Paradise Lost " 
is the Puritan epic. Butler had lived among the 
kind of ludicrous fanatics that he delineates, and 
though we must not judge of the Puritans only 
by his poem, we must allow it a fair share of 
solid truth. " Hudibras," we think, is rather too 
much out of fashion in our own age. But this 



The Division into Epochs. 135 

is not wonderful ; for with all its wit and fancy, 
the world it depicts has gone utterly by; its 
allusions and illustrations are but half intelligible 
to modern readers ; and it wants the human and 
dramatic interest which is the surest preservative 
of a book's popularity. The Spanish life in " Don 
Quixote " is interesting, but it is the Don himself 
and Sancho that keep it alive. ISTo satires retain 
their vitality without some element besides that 
which made them liked in their own genera- 
tion; and the " Tar tuffe " itself survives not as 
a satire merely but as a good acting play. There 
is salt enough, however, in " Hudibras " to pre- 
serve it for ever, whether it be much read or no. 
His life, admirably told by Johnson in his " Lives 
of the Poets," is a melancholy story. He was 
neglected by his own party at a time when that 
party was in the ascendant, and died in 1680 so 
poor that he was buried at the expense of his 
friend, Mr. Longueville. In the next century his 
" Remains " were published, containing prose 
pieces which confirm his claim to rank among 
the greatest wits and humourists in the language* 



136 A Course of English Literature. 

The comedy of the Restoration has attained a 
distinct celebrity of its own ; and has been made 
prominent in the eyes of our generation by Leigh 
Hunt, Charles Lamb, and Lord Macaulay. Our 
stage still feels its effect ; for it was at that time 
that dialogue and the representation of "manners " 
began to be laid such stress on by comic writers, 
whereas, previously, the display of individual 
characters and broader views of the humorous 
element in life prevailed. Congreve, who was a 
young man when Dryden was an old one, is the 
best-known type of the old school ; for though he 
produced nothing till 1693 (when the " Old 
Bachelor " was acted), he was essentially of the 
same class as the Ethereges and Wycherleys. 
The persons of all this order of dramas are 
fashionable men about town, who practise im- 
morality and talk epigrams, whose attraction is a 
certain air of clever but rather blackguardly 
" quality " ; exhibiting a much lower ideal of gay 
gentlemanly rakishness than the Mercutios, and a 
total want of the rich genial humour of the 
Falstaffs of an earlier time. That the coarseness 



The Division into Epochs. 137 

and licence of the Kestoration comedy was a re- 
action against Puritanism, has often been pointed 
out. And perhaps it may be allowed to go for 
something in palliation of the conduct of the 
rakes who were the comic ideals of the day, that 
the confusion of the Civil War, during which they 
were born, had made their domestic training less 
regular and influential than it might otherwise 
have been. 

The plays of Dryden are, we fear, practically 
forgotten. But some of those of Otway still 
survive ; and that unhappy genius may stand to 
us as the best type of the drama of Epoch Fifth. 
Like Dryden, he sometimes adopted the French 
fashion of writing for the stage in rhyme — an 
experiment not repeated in our literature after 
this period, though occasionally very successful 
then. Otway's best-known tragedy, " Venice 
Preserved," appeared in 1680-1, and its genuine 
vein of tenderness is yet powerful enough to 
make one forget its faults. His " Orphan," also, 
deserves special mention, as the earliest of those 
domestic, or, so to speak, familiar tragedies which 



138 A Course of English Literature. 

are to this day sure of a wide success in our 
theatres, if they are written with any degree of 
nature and skill. Poor Otway's life was even 
more tragic than his tragedies, and his biography 
(see it 9 also, in Johnson's " Poets ") is still 
shorter and sadder than that of Butler. He died 
in 1685, in a manner which Johnson was "un- 
willing to mention"; it is not quite certain how, 
but at all events miserably. 

The manners, anecdotes, &c, of Charles the 
Second's reign have always been popular topics 
with light writers. Such books as Mr. Cunning- 
ham's " Nell Gwynn " sufficiently represent this 
feature of the epoch ; the degree of attention you 
bestow on them will depend on your own time 
and taste, but we do not feel called upon to dwell 
much on the subject. Lord Macaulay has boiled 
down heaps of the small literature of the age into 
a celebrated chapter, which accordingly is coloured, 
as might have been feared, by the exaggeration 
natural to its sources. " Ned Ward," " Tom 
Brown," and Co., may safely be left to the 
curious ; for in every case it is better for the 



The Division into Epochs. 139 

student to bestow his time on great men and 
brilliant eras. Whatever time, too, he has to 
bestow on any writer of Epoch Fifth not already 
mentioned, should be given to the minor poems 
and life of Andrew Marvell, or to the pamphlets 
and life of Fletcher of Saltoun. The "Biographia 
Britannica " and Chambers's later work of the 
kind, will be found useful for these two old 
worthies, who represent a political school and 
class very important in those days, though 
extinct in our own. 

Epoch Sixth: From the Revolution of 1688, to 
the Death of George the Second in 1760. — "We 
have adopted this division to avert the neces- 
sity of a too extensive sub- division. It is, in- 
deed, customary to speak of the Queen Anne 
period as one standing by itself, but practically it 
would be inconvenient to recognise this, strictly, 
just now ; though we shall follow the old custom 
of speaking of the group of famous writers 
flourishing 1702-1714 as Queen Anne men. Our 
present division takes in the Revolution at one 
end, and the ascent to the throne of the first 






140 -A. Course of English Literature. 

British sovereign of the Hanover family at the 
other. It includes a period during which the 
Constitution became practically settled on revolu- 
tion principles, in the form which it still retains ; 
during which our party system, our finance 
system, our parliamentary system, became what 
we still see them — though modified, of course — in 
the times in which we live. Manners and fashions 
have undergone many changes, and the country is 
changing in every way, year by year. But cer- 
tainly our Constitution has escaped, since 1688, 
those violent shocks experienced by other forms of 
government ; and it owes this to the adaptability 
of its framework to the character of the people — 
the result of the wise and honest provisions of 
many generations of our ancestors. At every 
stage of the nation's progress, the historical 
element has predominated, and not till that is 
thrown overboard will all chance of reforming 
grievances without violence have passed away. 

The Eevolution of 1688 has been criticised in a 
great variety of styles, and it is not our business 
to impose opinions on disputed questions of 



The Division into Epochs. 141 

politics upon readers whom we are endeavouring 
only to help to form opinions for themselves. 
That it could be achieved so quietly was owing to 
the Civil War, and its history has a different and 
an inferior kind of interest to that of the Civil 
War. Sir James Mackintosh's " History of the 
Revolution" is a book to be specially recom- 
mended to the student at this point. He is one 
of the least offensive of partisans. But, indeed, 
though a consequence of the Revolution was that 
development of our party-system which makes 
the whole of last century a field of controversy, 
the Revolution itself is now seen to have been a 
political necessity, and so decidedly such, that it 
is unprofitable to speculate on the motives of 
many who were engaged in it. Let it suffice to 
note, as the next points of interest for the reader 
who has gone through the events which followed 
James's " abdication " and defeat in Ireland : — 

1. The great wars with France, involving the 
biography of Marlborough, of Benbow, and other 
less-known heroes (see Alison's " Marlborough," 
and the " Marlborough Despatches," and Camp- 



142 A Course of English Literature. 

bell's "Lives of the Admirals") — down to the 
Peace of Utrecht in 1712. A good deal of our 
most interesting literature connects itself with 
the latter part of these transactions, e. g., the 
political tracts of Swift and Bolingbroke. (Com- 
pare, also, the paper on Defoe, by Mr. Forster, 
first published in the "Edinburgh Eeview," of 
1845, for the interesting relation of the author of 
" Kobinson Crusoe " to our politics.) 

2. The long and peaceful ministry of Sir 
Eobert Walpole, following after the fall of the 
Tory government, at the death of Queen Anne. 
(See Lord Stanhope's " History," the Works of 
Horace Walpole, Lord Hervey's " Memoirs," and 
Brougham's " Essays on our Statesmen "; also, 
Scott's " Life of Swift," for interesting and 
popular accounts of the doings of those times.) 
The standard biography of Sir Robert Walpole is 
by Coxe. 

3. The Pelham administration, the rise and 
glory of Lord Chatham, and the British triumphs 
of the Seven Years' War, forming a brilliant 
centre-point in the middle part of last century. 



The Division into Epochs. 143 

These, we say, are (in a necessarily very con- 
densed form) the historical events to be studied 
under Epoch Sixth. The Scotch rebellions, 
meanwhile, come in, like bits of old feudal 
romance, in the midst of all the party-combats of 
the clever parliamentary gentlemen in cocked 
hats and ruffles, whose wit sparkles through the 
pages of Horace Walpole. That white rose in its 
button-hole gives almost all its poetry to the 
town-loving, sarcastic, somewhat coarse-minded 
century. And this brings us to the literature of 
the period, which (as usual) reflects its character. 

The line of English philosophers is carried on 
after Hobbes, by Locke, whose famous Essay was 
published a few years after the Kevolution. Locke 
represents in mental speculation the materialistic 
and prosaic side of the English mind, but also its 
shrewdness, downrightness, and cheerfulness of 
temper. In metaphysics, his antithesis is the 
idealist Berkeley, the contemporary and friend of 
Pope and Swift, a writer of exquisite clearness, 
and a man beyond all praise. The philosophical 
influence of these two great men divided the 



144 -^ Course of English Literature. 

century between them. Locke was the forerunner 
of much that is most practical in England, as the 
application of " common sense " to the highest 
matters of inquiry, resulting in religious tolera- 
tion, for instance, and such doctrines. Berkeley's 
was a more poetic nature, and his writings have 
had equally strong admirers and disciples, though 
their influence is less traceable in every-day in- 
tellectual life. Locke's is the homelier style, but 
Berkeley's is familiar and easy ; and this quality 
he shared with the greatest writers of the age 
under review. 

We have remarked already, the transition from 
the stately, cumbrous, old-fashioned prose of the 
men of Elizabeth and James's time to the free, 
colloquial diction of Dryden's prefaces and 
Cowley's Essays. The " Queen Anne men " — 
Swift, Addison, Pope, Prior, &c— carried to per- 
fection the art of talking in print without 
sacrificing that greater weight which attaches to 
the printed word. They were the men of the 
world of literature — writing to the world, and not 
to scholars only. "Polite Letters" was the 



The Division into Epochs. 145 

fashionable phrase in those times for literature, 
and if there was less literature then than now, it 
was certainly not inferior to ours, nor was it less 
esteemed. Nearly all the statesmen of the years 
following the Revolution encouraged it in some 
shape ; every battle had its poem, every death its 
elegy, every crisis its crack pamphlet. We must 
certainly allow the party zeal of the new state of 
things some of the credit ; and it is worth notic- 
ing how the popularising of our institutions had 
been ripening people for the enjoyment of writings 
addressed to numbers. Journalism owed a vast 
deal to the Civil War. But the Queen Anne men 
refined journalism, while they popularised litera- 
ture. The "Spectator" and "Tatler" were 
good enough for anybody, at the same time that 
they were addressed to everybody. Reading has 
steadily increased, as an amusement, since that 
time. 

Accordingly, the literature of the epoch before 
us is of the world, worldly ; of society, social. It 
is by no means a poetic epoch ; nor, indeed, is it 
easy to class Gay and Prior as poets either with 



V 



146 A Course of English Literature. 

the men who lived before them, or men who have 
lived since. They are all, in fact, from Swift and 
Pope downwards, rather social moralists than any- 
thing else. They are not romantic, nor imagina- 
tive, nor sentimental, but shrewd, clever, brilliant 
and pointed. And the next step in our literature, 
the second phase of what we call Epoch Sixth, is 
the appearance of the modern novel — the novel 
of Fielding; the Swiftian and Popian genius 
carried one step further in a new walk. This last 
is one of the most notable points in the literary 
history of this epoch. 

Poetry, from the time of the Queen Anne men 
onward through the chief part of the last century, 
did not flourish luxuriously, and was remarkable 
rather for finish and neatness than for inherent 
force of poetic genius. The didactic tone was 
apt to predominate, as we see even in the 
" Seasons " of Thomson, and the " Lyrics " of 
Gray. In fact, the exquisite cleverness and 
pungency of Pope put the more spiritual kinds 
of poetry out of fashion for a long time, and it 
was only by a reaction that men like Warton and 



The Division into Epochs, 147 

Percy obtained a hearing for Spenser and the 
ballads. The revival begin ning with their labours 
ultimately led to a kind of literary revolution, 
coinciding with the political revolution which was 
the great feature of — 

Epoch Seventh: From the accession of George 
III., 1760, to the Reform Bill, in 1832.— The 
events of this epoch are too fresh in popular 
remembrance to require that we should deal with 
it at great length. Pursuing our arrangement, 
we indicate, first, with brevity, the historical 
points to be studied. Such are — 

1. George III.'s struggles with the aristocratic 
parties in his endeavours to assert the power of 
the Crown ; and the violent agitations of the early 
part of his reign, involving some interesting lite- 
rary matter, as the satires of Churchill, " Junius's 
Letters," Wilkes's " North Briton," &c. These 
movements were signs of that general revolt 
against authority which Dr. Johnson always de- 
plored as the worst sign of his own age ; and 
they were accompanied by an occasional popular 
jealousy of the House of Commons, a new feature 

L 2 



148 A Course of English Literature. 

in our political history, which by-and-by helped to 
produce the Reform Bill. 

2. The American War. This was the great 
public event of George III.'s reign, till the 
French revolution superseded everything, and 
took its place as the master-fact in modern 
history. The Whigs, who, after the death of 
Queen Anne, had on the whole predominated in 
the Government for half a century or so, were after 
that doomed to opposition for the most part; 
and the American War (whatever may be thought 
of it now) was certainly popular in its own time. 
The party history of this epoch is so copious as to 
defy ordinary compression. Each of the magnates 
has a literature of his own, indeed ; and Burke's 
Letters, Tracts, and Speeches, Fox's Letters and 
Speeches, the Memoirs and Letters of Horace 
Walpole, supply abundant material for the 
student. It is an unfortunate fact, that good 
biographies of the great men of the eighteenth 
century are much wanted; there being seldom 
any choice but between heavy accumulations of 
material handled without spirit, and sketches too 



The Division into Epochs. 149 

brief to be finally satisfying. What is still 
worse, however, is that we have few good works 
on the social history of the eighteenth century. 
The party history, the domestic history, is copious 
enough; but the growth of towns, the increase of 
trade, the silent work of the time generally, has 
had little justice done it in literature, though we 
feel the effects of it all in every tendency of our 
own day. A good history of Methodism, for 
instance, written by somebody who was neither a 
Methodist nor an enemy of Methodists, would be 
very desirable. Southey's " Life of Wesley," 
and Wesley's own " Journal," are interesting as 
indications of the meaning of that spiritual move- 
ment among the mass which contrasts so 
curiously with the rather indifferent and sceptical 
tone of the upper class during the century. Dr. 
Johnson may, indeed, be studied as a perfect 
example of the old natural loyalty, seriousness, 
and solid — without being spasmodic — faith of the 
bulk of the best among the English. But we 
must advance to 

3. The French Revolution. Historically, as 



150 A Course of English Literature. 

regards us, this great event was a test of the 
soundness of our institutions. That the spirit of 
revolution worked strongly here is certain; but it 
always worked within comparatively narrow 
limits. The mass of the people resisted it, and 
when it assumed the form in France of an armed 
propagandism, our nationality took fire, carried 
everything before it, and triumphantly bore us 
through a long struggle, whole and sound. Sir 
Archibald Alison's remains the standard history 
of the struggle, precisely because, in addition to 
its literary merits — its grasp, spirit, and zeal — it 
is so national in view and in tone. The writer has 
very definite and strongly-expressed opinions as to 
the principles on which England should be 
governed, but this is so sincerely for England's 
own sake, that the public does not take a 
party view of his History, but accepts it as 
a familiar British possession. A feeling like 
this makes a people overlook many defects, 
even in the case of writers very inferior to 
Alison. 

The men of letters of George III.'s reign will 



The Division into Epochs. 151 

come before us, of course, in their several classes, 
for special treatment. At present, let us only 
point out their relation to the epoch in which we 
have grouped them. 

They naturally divide themselves into two 
divisions. 

1. The elder generation, flourishing when 
Epoch Seventh began, or about that time. Such 
were Johnson, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Hume, Cow- 
per, Churchill, Sterne, &c. These had all a 
certain character about them, however different 
amongst themselves, which marks them as chil- 
dren of the same generation. Johnson represented 
the old scholastic English style, to which he gave 
a new vitality, by his natural force of genius. 
Goldsmith's poetry is almost the last original 
didactic poetry of the school made popular by 
Pope and Parnell, as Cowper of the kindred 
branch, made popular by Young. Goldsmith's 
prose, again, is a sweeter and more genial kind of 
the prose made popular by Addison and Steele. 
Hume and Gibbon reflect wider influences — the 
free inquiry and boundless criticism of the French, 



152 A Course of English Literature. 

as well as their own native associations. They 
are the heralds of the great changes which are to 
come when they are in their graves. Sterne has 
the wit and persiflage of his time, and being 
sentimental, is consciously, and sometimes mis- 
chievously, sentimental. The mockery of the 
sceptical spirit haunts him even in his tenderness, 
and he is Voltaire and Rousseau, to a certain 
degree, in one. Burke is the embodiment of the 
passionate intellect of the era, nourished and kept 
alive by literature and by political activity. As 
Johnson may stand for the last of the old breed 
of English yeomen in literature, sticking doggedly 
to English traditions on the principle of common 
sense, so Burke for the last of a more romantic 
class, also representing the past, but on different 
grounds. Burke's " Reflections on the French 
Eevolution " is an eternal model of the defence 
of institutions on historical grounds, and of that 
old literate eloquence which is the glory of con- 
stitutional principles. 

2. The younger generation. By these we mean 
the race of writers who were young in the latter 



The Division into Epochs. 153 

part of George III.'s reign, and whose influence 
extended, living and supreme, from the French 
Revolution to the Eeform Bill. The most con- 
spicuous of them were poets, and their work was 
essentially a revival. Byron, Wordsworth, Cole- 
ridge, Keats, these are the most important of 
them; and in various directions they produced 
similar results. The revival extended to criticism 
and humour, as represented by such men as Lamb 
and Hazlitt. It is the influence of these later 
men of Epoch Seventh which is the immediate 
agent in most of to-day's literature, though cross- 
currents of an older power traverse the influence 
here and there. 

It would be easy to expand these suggestions 
at great length, but one of our objects is to fur- 
nish the reader hints, which he may work out for 
himself. Content to have indicated to him, in 
the brief space of these papers, the connection 
which may be traced between the different 
branches of our course — the groupings which may 
be formed of events and men — we leave him to 
meditate these, and shall proceed to deal sepa- 



154 -4 Course of English Literature. 

rately with separate divisions of our literature. 
Yet, we shall not pass over any proper opportu- 
nity of lighting up by allusions whatever our 
space may have hitherto compelled us to treat 
with but scant justice. 





VIII. 



BIOGKAPHY. 




FTER having bestowed some attention 
upon history, and upon the connection 
of other branches of literature with 
that most comprehensive study, we proceed to 
deal specially with the remaining subjects of our 
course. And first, for biography, which, though 
itself a kind of history, has all the attraction and 
value of an independent species of composition. 
General history involves biographies, and every 
biography involves history. But it is a deeply- 
rooted fact in human nature, that the story of the 
doings and fortunes of a single fellow-creature 
should touch our feelings and imagination more 
vividly than that of masses told on a wider scale. 



156 A Course of English Literature. 

Hence, some of the most popular books in every 
literature are biographies ; while, among novels, 
the "most popular are of the biographical order — 
fictitious " lives," in fact, where the interest 
centres in one person, or at least in very few. It 
is also through biography that the mass of people 
derive their historical knowledge and ideas : and 
when the hero of a life is a representative person 
(to use a happy modern expression), his history 
is in some sense that of his whole period — nay, 
occasionally, is itself great part of such history. 
We would, therefore, urge upon our student the 
necessity of selecting and perusing some of the 
chief English Lives of great men of all kinds ; 
and the present chapter shall be devoted to assist- 
ing him in this department. 

Unfortunately, good and popular " Lives " of 
great men are not so common as they ought to be 
in English literature ; nor does any branch of our 
knowledge better deserve the thoughtful attention 
of the friends of education. A good " Life" is a 
portrait of a man, and something more than that ; 
and requires a union of qualities, by no means 



Biography. 157 

common, in the writer. With respectable abili- 
ties, a biographer can produce a judicious and 
sensible narrative of the career of a remarkable 
person ; or with respectable abilities of a lighter 
kind, he may seize the picturesque traits of his 
individuality and achievements. But it is very 
rare to find a master in both these arts — one whose 
judgment enables him to discern what is really 
significant in the little accessories of biography 
(as anecdotes, &c), and who has a genius at the 
same time equal to fine dramatic delineation. 
Between the biographer who is only sensible, and 
the biographer who is only smart, the reader too 
often falls to the ground. " Lives," which could 
be called works of art, a man may count upon 
his fingers. The mass of u Lives" are a kind of 
obituary notices in octavo — too poor to be called 
good books, and too long for biographical dic- 
tionaries. Let us glance at a few of the high- 
class ones, and illustrate the state of the art as 
we go along. 

The high-class biographies, most important to 
a student of our course, are such as Isaac Walton's 



158 A Course of English Literature. 

" Lives ; " Johnson's " Lives of the Poets ; " Bos- 
well's " Life of Jolmson" himself; the " Life of 
Sir Walter Scott," by Lockhart ; and the " Life 
of Nelson," by Southey. These are among the 
best specimens in onr literature, and should be 
read by the student in any order in which he 
may happen to meet with them. They comprise a 
great deal of information about very important 
men and periods, and are all written in a good 
spirit and with good principles. They may be 
discussed as exhibiting whatever variety of merit 
belongs to such compositions. 

Thus, in the " Lives " of Isaac Walton (which 
introduce us to the acquaintance of some of the 
greatest men of the seventeenth century) we have 
an example of that candour and sweetness of dis- 
position — that open sense of human goodness and 
human character — which is the necessary moral 
basis of biography. He loved and relished the 
men about whom he wrote, and (in spite of what 
Lord Macaulay calls the biographer's " disease of 
admiration"), we must pronounce this a desirable 
characteristic. Without this, what would Bos- 



Biography. 159 

well Lave been? He was not a man of great 
abilities — though, assuredly his abilities are grossly 
underrated — but he had a kind loyal heart, a 
natural admiration of excellence, and an eye for 
character, and even for the dramatic, much keener 
than that of many who pass for clever men ; in 
this respect, he ranks as a biographer with 
Walton, though of course there is infinitely more 
modern interest and variety in his copious pages, 
than in those old-fashioned portraits — grave and 
tender — of the earlier writer : — 

" Satellites burning in a lucid ring, 
Around meek "Walton's heavenly memory — " 

as Wordsworth finely calls them. 

Boswell's "Johnson," in fact, is the very 
centre-piece of English literary interest in the 
eighteenth century — the apple of its intellectual 
eye ; a treasure of a book preserving the life of a 
whole generation. What it has done for the 
great doctor himself, can hardly be exaggerated. 
Though his marked and emphatic style has left 
deep traces of itself — visible in the newspapers, 
even, every day — he is chiefly remembered through 



160 A Course of English Literature. 

Boswell. Few read his "London," or "Vanity 
of Human Wishes ; " his " Kasselas " is tradi- 
tionally read in youth, but not familiarly remem- 
bered; his "Bambler" seems to belong to a 
bygone world; and even his "Lives of the Poets" 
is chiefly kept alive by the quotations of men-of- 
letters. But his capital, pointed, hearty sayings 
— drawn from the work of his faithful Scotch 
admirer — fly perpetually about the world, and 
will preserve his influence to remote generations. 
Had there been no Boswell, his memory would 
indeed have been venerated, but very distantly. 
Boswell made him a familiar figure, and enabled 
us to think of him "in his habit as he lived" 
almost as vividly as if we had known him. It is 
worth noticing in literary history that there has 
been a revival of opinion in favour of Johnson 
during the last quarter of a century. Byron 
remarks that it was the fashion to decry him in 
his time, but now the fashion is quite the other 
way. This is partly no doubt owing to the stir 
produced by Mr. Croker's " Boswell," which gave 
occasion to new views of his life and genius from 



Biography. 1 6 1 

the most eminent of the rising generation of 
some thirty years since. It will be a good study 
for our reader to compare the essay on Johnson 
by Carlyle, with the essay on him by Macaulay ; 
a study which, while it helps him to appreciate 
Johnson, will help him to appreciate — and to see 
the distinctions between— two of his own most 
influential contemporaries. The illustrative lite- 
rature about Johnson is of course large. . Croker's 
"Boswell" opens up a great deal of it. Mr. 
Forster's " Life of Goldsmith " supplies more : 
being a storehouse of the literary information of 
the time, as well as a pleasant telling kind of 
book. The agreeable, kindly, " nice " ic Gold- 
smith " of Washington Irving may be read in the 
same connection ; as well as the edition of Bos- 
well's "Tour to the Hebrides" by Mr. Bobert 
Carruthers. These are accessible books, and 
should be in the libraries of all Institutes and 
Athenaeums as a matter of course. In fact, there 
is something in Johnsonian literature, which, by 
its vigour, decisiveness, and humour, has a ten- 
dency to counteract some of the more morbid 



1 62 A Course of English Literature, 

symptoms of the literature of our own day. A 
youthful student, foaming under the influence of 
the "spasmodic" school, could not be more 
wholesomely treated than to a dose of Johnson's 
poetry — the admirable moral and satirical essays 
in verse mentioned above — and the beautiful lines 
on Levett. 

His " Lives of the Poets," however, demands a 
little longer notice on the present occasion. If 
the great excellence of Boswell's book is the 
genial loyalty of spirit which it indicates — the 
open-hearted " receptivity " of the writer making 
him preserve, as by an instinct, everything that 
could illustrate the character, temper, and habits 
of his hero — so the excellence of that hero's own 
biographies is of a different sort. Johnson's 
" Lives" of other people has just the quality least 
conspicuous in Boswell's "Life of Johnson" him- 
self — critical judgment and sagacity. Boswell 
nowhere shows that he could estimate his man, 
critically : that he was fit to apportion to him his 
exact place in literature and among men. But 
Johnson's book, with all its shortcomings, has 



Biography. 163 

eminently that merit. His eye for. character was 
wonderful, and it will rarely be fonnd that he has 
pronounced judgments on any individual which 
time has set aside. He treated Gray as harshly 
as anybody, yet our most recent criticism does 
not rank Gray so high, as an original poet, as his 
admirers ranked him in Johnson's time. He is 
somewhat hard on Milton, but nowhere has 
" Paradise Lost " been panegyrised so nobly and 
at the same time so judiciously as in Johnson's 
memoir. All the fresh discoveries about Pope, 
though curious and numerous, do not much 
modify the fundamental judgment passed on him 
by the doctor. The " Life of Savage " (one of 
his earlier works), remains perfectly unequalled 
as an apologetic and philosophical narrative of a 
career. And, in that book, we have a hundred 
proofs of the natural kindness of the writer, in 
whom the affection he had formed for Savage 
outweighed all sense of his weaknesses, and yet 
never induced him to disguise them or to falsify 
the story. But perhaps there is no better proof 
of the soundness of Johnson's good sense through- 

m 2 



164 A Course of English Literature. 

out the whole "Lives," than the way in which 
he employs anecdotes and trifles. The great 
difficulty is to steer between the two dangers of 
making a " Life " dry, and making it trivial, 
— of despising details as undignified, and of 
heaping them together for the amusement of the 
frivolous and foolish. A careful reader will find 
the " Lives of the Poets " a perfect model in this 
respect. The present tendency among writers is 
certainly towards the latter, which is also the 
newer of the two dangers ; and there are signs, 
accordingly, in our critical literature, of a re- 
action against it. 

The " Lives of the Poets " is a common book. 
A fine edition, containing a great deal of useful 
annotation, was published by Mr. Peter Cunning- 
ham, in 1854. 

However interesting literary biography may be, 
it can never vie in attraction with the biography 
of men of action ; nor is it desirable that it should. 
The active heroes of a country — the doers of its 
history — have a right to take precedence in 
biography — if only because they do not leave 



Biography, 165 

written records of themselves generally, and 
cannot speak face to face with posterity, as is the 
case with those who survive, so to speak, in 
famous books. It is to be regretted that we know 
so little of the external history of Shakspeare; 
but Shakspeare can afford the loss better than a 
martyr, a soldier, or a king. Unfortunately, we 
are but poorly supplied with lives of our worthies. 
It was not till our own time, that Admiral Blake 
found even a poor biographer ; and it would not 
be easy to obtain — for putting, say, into a spirited 
lad's hands — good, hearty, and lively accounts of 
such men as Drake, Raleigh, or Benbow. A de- 
lightful specimen of what such books ought to be, is 
Southey's " Nelson," where the tale of that hero's 
doings is told with infinite clearness and grace, 
in a beautiful yet simple English style, glowing 
all over with noble feeling. Another " Life " 
conspicuous for graphic force and condensation 
of materials is the " Napoleon " of the late Mr. 
Lockhart. The same high gentleman's " Burns," 
is also a capital book ; while his " Scott " is 
known to all the world as one of the master- 



1 66 A Course of English Literature. 

pieces of biography in recent times. An easy, 
perspicuous, graceful style, varied by acute and 
pungent touches of humour, makes Lockhart one 
of the most agreeable of the first-class writers of 
his day. If his " Scott " is in any danger, it is 
perhaps from the fact, that posterity (constantly 
pressed upon by new literature) will be apt to 
think it too bulky. 

Bulkiness is, indeed, one of the greatest evils 
of biography, and one of the commonest. In the 
case of modern celebrities, the " Life" following 
close on the death of its hero, is naturally welcome 
to a large public ; and (materials in most cases 
being plentiful) it is at once an easy and a profit- 
able business to make it large and dear. As time 
goes on, however, the celebrity looks smaller and 
smaller to the eyes of the men from whom he 
recedes, and the " Life " settles over him like a 
grave-stone — broad and heavy, and very little 
read. Even in the case of the most renowned 
men, a big biography is a misfortune. And what 
is curious, is, that some writers insist on writing 
huge biographies, even when the available material 



Biography. 167 

is notoriously scanty. Perhaps there is no more 
singular example of this fault than the " Life of 
Chaucer" by Godwin. All that is known of 
Chaucer may be told in a few pages ; Godwin 
took two large quartos to it, filling up with long 
dissertations on the Feudal System, the Plan- 
tagenets, &c, &c. ; and (like the Egyptians) 
building a Pyramid over a handful of dust. Sir 
Walter Scott wrote a most amusing review of this 
book in an early number of the " Edinburgh." 
There is a good story apropos of this. When he 
first suggested the article to Jeffrey, " Ah ! " 
exclaimed the liveliest of critics, "just the article 
I like— he hates the man, and knows the subject ! " 
(It is not every editor that insists on both 
conditions). And at this point we may recall 
Macaulay's capital critique on Nares's " Life of 
Burleigh," as being so many inches long and 
broad, and weighing so many pounds avoirdupois. 
What makes this " tendency to corpulence " in 
our biography less excusable, is that most of the 
great works of art of the kind are really of modest 
proportions : witness Plutarch, the " Agricola " 



1 68 A Course of English Literature. 

of Tacitus, the lives of Walton, and those of 
Vasari. 

In some cases this " bulkiness "is of course 
more pardonable than others, for where the 
subject of a biography has played a great part in 
the world, materials accumulate heavily on the 
writer's hands. But frequently even this excuse 
is not valid. The whole history of a time is re- 
written over and over again, apropos of its con- 
spicuous men ; and literature is thus loaded with 
mere repetitions. What are especially wanted, 
now, are good popular summaries of the lives of 
English notables — summaries trustworthy in fact, 
and quite spacious enough to admit of a likeness 
of the man being visible in them. Though this 
is sometimes accomplished in special books, it is 
more frequently accomplished in articles, essays, 
sketches, &c. Thus, Mr. Carlyle's papers on 
Diderot, Heine, Kichter, or Burns, are quite little 
gems of biography in their way, showing the 
biographic genius as vividly as his " Life of 
Sterling " — which last, by-the-by, we consider 
the completest specimen of good biography pub- 



Biography. 1 69 

listed in our own time. Lord Brougham's 
sketches of Statesmen and Men of Letters, 
though his style is verbose, have much merit of 
portraiture. But of course, everything is not to be 
sacrificed to a mere question of the reader's time ; 
and as modern lives are always expected to let 
their hero in some degree speak for himself — 
through his correspondence, for instance, or his 
diary — we must not limit their authors too closely. 
Stanley's "Life of Arnold" — which our student 
should by all means peruse — is a very happy in- 
stance of the due medium between prolixity of 
detail and poverty of detail. Everything essential 
to the right understanding of a great and good 
man is given ; yet sufficient homely and personal 
matter to make us feel that comparative domestic 
familiarity with him, which is one of the most 
charming and valuable results of good biography. 
Much of the information which readers seek 
from this branch of our course, is found in 
biographical collections — such as dictionaries, 
and so forth. All large libraries contain works 
like the " Biographia Britannica," the " Athenaa 



170 A Course of English Literature. 

Oxonienses" of Wood, and the Dictionary of 
Chalmers. These are works of reference — belong- 
ing rather to the business side than to the artistic 
side of literature, and not demanding much notice 
at our hands. What we recommend to our 
student — " if we may call him so," as they say in 
Parliament — is rather the closest study of artistic 
models than a too great eagerness to accumulate 
variety of information. Something has been said 
of such models in this chapter, already ; while as 
for biographies of which information is the chief 
feature, many of these have been referred to 
before, and some may require mention again. 
Meanwhile, let the readers of the works by 
Walton, Johnson, Boswell, Southey, Lockhart, 
Carlyle, and Stanley, discussed in the present 
chapter, bear constantly in view the laws of 
biography, as they may be observed in action, in 
these compositions. Mark, first, the clear, com- 
prehensive image of his man present to a good 
biographer's eye before he absolutely sets about to 
render it visible to others. Mark kow, in making 
it so visible, he seizes the vital points in his 



Biography. 171 

character and career, rejecting the less important 
and less instructive, preserving trifles only when 
characteristic, and leaving the meaner sort of 
gossip to the twaddler of the curiosity-shop. The 
discipline of literature consists in this intellectual 
process of study ; since we do not read only for 
information, but for the mental exercise, in pro- 
portion to which alone will information be 
beneficial and serviceable. 

There is a curious subdivision of the class of 
books before us, with a few words on which we 
shall conclude the present chapter. We allude 
to autobiographies — the stories of men's own lives 
by themselves. Of these, our English literature 
has some which, from their excellence, demand to 
be specially pointed out. 

Such, for instance, is Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury' s Life of himself, which Horace Walpole 
published from the family papers during the last 
century. This was the Lord Herbert famous as a 
philosopher, and known as the author of a history 
of Henry VIII. He was a young man under 
Elizabeth, and died in the reign of Charles I., 



1 72 A Course of English Literature. 

having led a curious mixed life — half scholar, 
half soldier — famous as a man of learning, famous 
as a swordsman. The curious naivete of his 
narrative gives it quite a dramatic interest; 
while it naturally affords some glimpses of the 
social life of his whole age both in England and 
abroad. The book is short, too, and reprints of 
it are common, so the reader will admit that we 
are imposing no great task upon him in asking 
him to go through it. 

From Lord Herbert's autobiography we pass to 
those of two different men in a different age — 
Hume and Gibbon. We specify these as models 
of the way in which men can write about them- 
selves without egotism, and yet without disguise 
or concealment. It is a middle way, most difficult 
to hit — avoiding the repulsive freedom of what are 
called " Confessions" (which in every form shock 
men's sense of the proper self-respect of human 
nature), yet avoiding the other danger of a mere 
barren record of outward events. Hume, we say, 
and Gibbon, are first-rate in their narrative of 
their own lives as in that of the lives of others ; 



Biography. 173 

and a careful study of their autobiographies will 
be found more profitable than the running through 
many more, with the names of which we shall 
not trouble the patient reader. 




IX. 




POETRY.— THE POETIC DRAMA. 

HERE is a twofold value in the study 
of poetry. First — there is the good 
moral effect which it has on the 
student, by strengthening his principles, sharpen- 
ing his sense of the good and the beautiful, and 
refining his nature. Secondly — there is the 
educational discipline, inasmuch as poetry exhi- 
bits language in its most perfect and subtle 
forms, and improves the understanding by exer- 
cise. Accordingly, in a classical education, the 
poets are employed from the very first; being, 
indeed, the mediums through whom real famili- 
arity with the ancient languages is ultimately (if 
ever) attained. Not the less should a reader, 



Poetry — -The Poetic Drama. 175 

anxious to have a liberal general knowledge of 
our own literature, pay attention to its poetry ; 
which, for depth of sentiment and feeling for 
nature, to say nothing of minor qualities, is the 
richest and grandest body of poetry in the 
world. 

We shall not go into a long preliminary 
dissertation on the question, " What is Poetry ? " 
Dr. Johnson, when it was put to him, replied : 
" Why, sir, that is not so easy to say. We know 
what light is, but it is not so easy to say what it 
is." This was an admirable illustration, for 
though the term poetry still waits its derlner, 
there is an instinctive feeling for the thing which 
may be safely trusted as a guide. Let the reader 
remember, however, that though we justly talk of 
poetry as distinguished from prose ; that still it 
is not prose which is the true opposite of it. 
Prose may be poetic — as poetry (in its narrow 
meaning of " verse ") may be — and unhappily too 
often is — prosaic. Let him also remember that 
the business of poetry — as poetry — is with the 
beautiful, though incidentally it may perform the 



176 A Course of English Literature. 

duties and exercise the influence of the moral or 
the religions elements in our nature. If to this 
he adds that the reason why poetry proper is 
musical, is that all intensity of feeling has a 
tendency to be musical, he will have seized, we 
think, all that is really known of what may be 
called the metaphysics of the subject. But such 
inquiries — and there has been far more written 
about them than we can make the most super- 
ficial reference to here — are not of vital conse- 
quence to our student. His business is to seek 
in the best poetry that stimulating and elevating 
excitement, with its accompanying mental disci- 
pline, which poetry naturally produces ; — our 
business is to tell him where such is to be found, 
and how it is best to be enjoyed and appreciated. 
All the practical good of the study and all the 
solid pleasure of it may be obtained without 
sounding the abysses of speculation,— one very 
transient glimpse at which we have just in- 
dulged in. 

In previous chapters of this Course, the lines 
connecting English poetry with English history 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 177 

have been at least faintly drawn, and though 
poetry has a separate existence of its own, so that 
Byron or Shakspeare may be read with pleasure 
apart from any reference to their periods or con- 
nection, still the historical bearings of poetry add 
a new satisfaction to its study, help to make it 
intelligible, and facilitate the whole study by 
making it systematic. For this reason, we shall 
notice the poets whom we commend to our 
reader's attention in their historical order. This, 
however, does not imply that we insist on his 
only reading them in that order. He may go 
backwards if he so please, or he may select at his 
pleasure any of the Epochs into which we have 
already divided the whole Course. That is no- 
thing to us, and his own choice may be (probably 
will be, if he seriously prefers it) beneficial to 
him ; only let him adhere to some plan, and let 
him always endeavour to understand the con- 
nection of age with age, school with school, of 
poetry, while he follows it up. 

Well, do we advise our reader to read all 
poetry — to attempt to read all poetry, rather ? 



178 A Course of English Literature. 

Not so. We have never contemplated from the 
first that he should read every hook mentioned in 
these articles, though it may still be of use to 
him to know something of their nature and value. 
What we advise, in the present as in all depart- 
ments of literature, is, that he shall endeavour to 
make some acquaintance with what is best in 
each. And to begin with — in our immediate 
topic — he need not meddle with what is only 
curious, ancient, or rare. We shall say nothing 
of " Piers Ploughman," or Skelton, or " Gam- 
mer Gurton's Needle ; " of Lord Buckhurst, the 
" Merry Devil of Edmonton," or the Earl of 
Surrey. Whatever is of general use in the early 
poetic literature of the country, may be derived 
through literary histories, and is distilled into a 
few chapters by men like Warton and Hallam. 
Even Chaucer himself is not now read, except in 
parts ; and though much has been done to fami- 
liarise the public with the " Canterbury Tales " 
(printed four centuries ago by Caxton ; modernised 
by Dry den in 1699-1700; edited with abundant 
learning in the last century, and frequently 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 179 

quoted and extracted from by recent popular 
critics) ; still, even they will now only be read 
in the original and antique language by the 
curious. What degree of popularity they enjoy — 
except in Dryden's version — at this moment, is 
the result mainly of that revival of an interest in 
our old writers which has been before mentioned 
as a characteristic of the age of Wordsworth and 
Coleridge. In Dryden's own time, they had 
gone quite out of fashion. " I find," says he, 
in his Preface to the Fables, " some people are 
offended that I have turned these tales into 
modern English ; because they think them un- 
worthy of my pains, and look on Chaucer as a 
dry old-fashioned wit, not worth reviving. I have 
often heard the late Earl of Leicester say, that 
Mr. Cowley himself was of that opinion." Here 
is a curious instance of the fluctuations of taste. 
The exact words which Cowley applied some two 
centuries since to Chaucer, are just such as would 
now-a-days be applied to Cowley himself, whom 
no man, either, would think of comparing to his 
old predecessor ! And here it is worth while to 

H 2 



/ 



180 A Course of English Literature. 

point out a phenomenon worth studying in lite- 
rary history. Our progress is not from step to 
step — each generation rising above its prede- 
cessor. It is rather of the nature of ebb and 
flow, where a low level may intervene between 
two high ones. And literature is perpetually 
refreshed by writers going back over the ages 
next them, and drawing inspiration from a still 
older time. A really great poet is sure of a 
revival after suffering whatever neglect. 

Our reader, then, if he cannot be expected to 
undertake a special study for the love of Chaucer 
— if he confines himself even to reading his little 
sketches of the Canterbury pilgrims without read- 
ing their " tales " in the poet's old tongue — will, 
at least, venerate the patriarch's memory, and 
like to know something of his literary place. 
The life of Chaucer is an obscure subject, but 
what we know of it is satisfactory. Our earliest 
was one of our most prosperous poets. He flou- 
rished in the latter half of the fourteenth and the 
earlier part of the fifteenth centuries, during the 
reigns of Edward III., Richard II. , and Henry IV. 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 181 

He was employed and rewarded by these princes 
— was connected by marriage with — 

" Old John of Gaunt — time-honoured Lancaster," 

and held an honourable as well as a comfortable 
position in that old feudal and mediaeval society. 
Godwin calculates his income from crown grants 
at something like twelve hundred a year, in- 
cluding his " four bottles of wine a day at our 
measure," which, according to that biographer, 
he drank regularly with his friends. So much 
for the meagre though agreeable facts of his life. 
His writings show all the characteristics of the 
best English poetical genius ; a very hearty love 
of — and sympathy with — nature ; and a rich vein 
of humour. It is in the " Canterbury Tales " 
(as has been hinted before in this Course) that 
we first make the personal acquaintance of our 
English ancestors. There they are — in dif- 
ferent clothes from ours ; with a language not 
familiar, though not so very unlike, either ; 
Catholics, too, with social manners strange to 
us, but still the same kind of men at bottom. 



1 82 A Course of English Literature. 

Dryden observed this in his generation, and it 
is equally true now — a century and a half after 
" glorious John " was laid in his grave. This 
power of creating individual character, which 
makes Chaucer's " frankeleyns," and " ship- 
men" so real, is very English. A long interval 
filled up the time between Chaucer and any great 
poet, and then it appeared again in still richer 
shapes in him who drew Falstaff and Mercutio, 
Jacques and Lear, in the pride and darling of 
the literature of England — William Shakspeare. 
Out of respect to that name, it is impossible to 
classify our poetry without giving the first place 
to the poetic drama, that having been the field in 
which a genius which would have shone in any 
sphere chanced to find itself employed. The fact 
that Shakspeare fell upon Elizabeth's reign, and 
that the theatre was then flourishing, has had a 
peculiar effect on our literature. While Shak- 
speare himself is so great that he leaves his con- 
temporaries behind him, and makes the general 
admirer of his plays altogether indifferent to the 
fact that they were first played at such and 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 183 

such, a time ; that same greatness has also kept 
the form and colour of his time permanently 
stamped on our dramatic literature. Where is 
the modern acted tragedy which stands on a level 
with the modern novel, or history, or lyric? 
There is none. A successful new tragic or semi- 
tragic play is always ^mm-Elizabethan. Shak- 
speare seems to have drawn in advance almost all 
the tragic genius of the country. What there is 
of it imitates — not his genius, for that is im- 
possible, but the conditions of life, language, 
and manners, under which it exercised itself. 
There is no other such phenomenon in our litera- 
ture. We have had modern poets who can write 
the Spenserian stanza without imitating Spenser ; 
or heroic blank verse without imitating Milton. 
Our lyrists do not necessarily echo the lyrical 
snatches in Shakspeare himself. But a copy of 
the forms of Elizabethan life seems a matter of 
course in our poetic drama. We speak, espe- 
cially, of the acted drama ; and, indeed, a drama 
that cannot be acted, is, properly speaking, a 
contradiction and anomaly. 



184 A Course of English Literature. 

' The universality of Shakspeare is the most 
characteristic fact about his genius as about the 
history of his writings. No plays " act " better , 
yet no plays are so much read ; they will be more 
acted the more theatres there are, and they would 
not be less read if every theatre in the country 
was put down to-morrow. So that it is only a 
secondary fact about Shakspeare that he wrote 
plays at all. The same amount of faculty would 
produce equally great results in any branch of 
literature ; and while his dramas may be studied 
as models of dramas merely, the characters, 
speeches, descriptions, are all themes for critic 
and philosopher, quite apart from the form in 
which we find them. He gives us the excellence 
of every kind of writing, embodied, with supreme 
excellence, in a particular kind. This is not 
vague panegyric, for the reader may observe in 
most contemporary works that any attraction in 
them not absolutely necessary to the design in- 
terferes with, and in some degree injures, the 
design. 

These great qualities in Shakspeare — and the 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 185 

fact that he appeared so early in our literary 
history — have made the study of him a kind of 
literature in itself. But here, too, his universality 
is in the reader's — is in the humblest reader's, 
favour. All the historical, critical, illustrative 
matter of which his writings admit, would involve 
the labours of whole lives. But boys may read 
him for the story, wags for the fun, girls for the 
poetry, and there is pleasure for all. This fact is 
at the bottom of the popular notion that he is, as 
distinguished from other great men, an intelli- 
gible and easy writer. He is so, but he is also 
so profound that the acutest and most sympa- 
thetic intellects may differ from each other as to 
his characters and the moral purposes and mean- 
ings involved in them. 

Accordingly, in attempting to instruct our 
student how he should conduct his study of the 
greatest of English poets, we feel the necessity of 
dividing the subject (as we have done our whole 
Course) into separate branches. We recommend, 
of course (and, once for all, this should be under- 
stood in all similar cases), that the reader shall 



1 86 A Course of English Literature* 

familiarise himself, by frequent readings, with 
Shakspeare's master-pieces, before entering on the 
collateral study of critics or commentators. One 
element in the greatness of the poet, is that after 
the lapse of some two centuries and a half, with 
all their changes of society, the distance of time 
at which he lived is less felt in reading him than 
any of his contemporaries. He admits of endless 
comment and explanation ; but moral and poetical 
pleasure can be derived from his writings, almost 
infinitely, by a man who scarcely knows whether 
Queen Elizabeth was English or French. When, 
however, our reader has sufficiently enjoyed this 
kind of pleasure from " Hamlet " and " Othello," 
" Macbeth " and " King Lear," the " Tempest " 
and "Borneo and Juliet," "As You Like It" 
and the "Midsummer Night' s Dream;" when 
the stately and beautiful personages in these and 
other dramas have become almost historical reali- 
ties to him, then he will feel the need of a deeper 
acquaintance with Shakspeare. What, he will 
ask himself, are the full moral meanings of works 
which stir a sense of wonder more acute even 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 187 

than the pleasure they give ? What can we learn 
of the man himself who produced them, and the 
life he led during the process ? Inquiries like 
these may of course be pushed to any extent. 
Their answer is to be sought in : — 

1. The writings of Shakspearian critics from a 
moral and artistic point of view. 

Shakspearian criticism was carried far more 
subtly and sympathetically on by the generation 
of Coleridge and Wordsworth than it had been 
before; not that Shakspeare was ever neglected, 
as some too hastily assume. A line of high 
and illustrious panegyrists of him may be traced 
from the time of his death — through Ben Jonson, 
Milton, Dryclen, Pope, Dr. Johnson — down to 
that of the great poets whom we have just 
mentioned. Charles I. is said to have been 
particularly fond of his works. Pope spent two 
years on an edition of them, which appeared in 
1725, and of which near seven hundred were sold 
in six quarto volumes, at a guinea a volume. 
Still, if we measure the zeal of our ancestors for 
Shakspeare by our own, we shall find them want- 



1 88 A Course of English Literature. 

ing. The improvement of his text did not begin 
for a century after his death, nor is the fact that 
altered versions of plays of his were permitted in 
Charles II. 's time satisfactory to reflect upon. 
All through last century, however, his fame and 
influence were growing. New editions succeeded 
each other ; elaborate discussions went on as to his 
" learning," &c. ; and in 1765 (which, by a pleasing 
coincidence, was also the year of the publication 
of Percy's " Eeliques ") Dr. Johnson's celebrated 
"Preface to Shakspeare" made its appearance — 
a piece of criticism far beyond the abilities of 
those who have presumed to sneer at it ; and im- 
portant as a defence of Shakspeare from what 
may be called the scholastic school of critics, by 
one who himself was in the habit of looking at 
literature from the scholar's point of view. The 
doctor, however, disappoints in his " remarks " 
on the special plays ; and, perhaps, we could not 
better illustrate the difference between his criti- 
cism and that of a later time, than by simply 
quoting his strange observation that " the pre- 
tended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth " 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 189 

— surely a very sorry summary of the effects on 
the mind of the sad quaintness and melancholy of 
that most mysterious of immortal figures ! 

The generation which followed Johnson studied 
Shakspeare more closely and reverently. In 
them, we would advise our student to look for 
hints and suggestions of a finer and more affec- 
tionate insight. Coleridge holds the first place 
amongst them — in criticism, as, indeed, perhaps 
in all things ; and to Coleridge one may still 
assign — yet with the modesty which becomes one 
in such decisions — the palm of Shakspearian 
criticism in England. Note, here, too, as a signi- 
ficant circumstance, that our finest criticism, 
from the time of Dryden downwards, has come 
from men who could themselves create. 

There were, also, amongst Coleridge's contem- 
poraries, other writers whose speculations on 
Shakspeare have value and beauty. How many 
of these a reader of our Course may meddle with, 
must depend on his inclination and opportu- 
nities. If he read any, he would do well to read 
Coleridge; and if he goes further, Hazlitt, and 



190 A Course of English Literature. 

Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, have much that is both 
acute and pleasant in their pages, not only on 
Shakspeare, but on our earlier poetic drama 
generally. Hazlitt has given special studies of 
Shakspeare's characters, discussing them (as is 
proper) much as one discusses historical people ; 
and in them there is a fine philosophical penetra- 
tion, expressed with spirit and neatness. Lamb's, 
again, was a rarer and tenderer nature than 
Hazlitt' s. He loved our olden literature all his 
life, and criticised and illustrated it, not only 
from his understanding but from his heart. 
This, indeed, is the charm of such of his essays 
as are devoted to literary subjects — he had the 
same sort of affection for his dead favourites that 
he had for the persons and things about him. A 
similar kindness mingles itself with the shrewd 
and subtle delicacies of Leigh Hunt's criticism, 
which, also, has contributed to the understanding 
and enjoyment of the poetic drama. 

Shakspeare, however — as Byron has less truly 
observed of Pope — is " a literature in himself." 
We will not attempt and could not achieve any- 



Poetry — The Poetic Drama. 191 

thing like a detailed account of all that has been 
written illustrative of him from the point of view 
under consideration. The above sketch will put 
the reader in the way of higher help, but such 
can only be of service in proportion to the zeal 
which he brings to bear himself. Light is of no 
use except to people with eyes ; and he who 
cannot make some discoveries for himself in his 
studies, will gain little from those of others. 
Take a play of Shakspeare's by itself, and study 
it as a whole. See how the construction is suited 
to the nature of the characters, and how the 
characters seem at the same time to compel just 
such an order as that of the construction. Study, 
also, each character by itself, as well as in 
juxta-position with its likeness or its opposite; 
and observe the complications and (apparent) 
contradictions in each. How much of Falstaffs 
cowardice is real, and how much of it humorous 
exaggeration ? What is the nature of Hamlet's 
love for Ophelia, or is it at any time real and 
earnest in proportion to his other feelings gene- 
rally ? Keconcile the nobleness with the wicked- 



192 A Course of English Literature. 

ness of Macbeth, and try to &k exactly the 
influence on him of the witches, and of his wife. 
Here are intellectual problems ! But it is the 
glory of our poet that these are everywhere recog- 
nised to be inquiries well worthy of the serious 
attention of the best minds ; literary counterparts 
of the great moral problems of human nature and 
human life. 





POETRY. 




HE second division into which the lite- 
rature illustrative of Shakspeare falls 
comprises : — 2. Works of a historical 
and antiquarian character about Shakspeare. 

It is obvious that these spring from a different 
class of critics, and deal with a different class of 
phenomena, from the books referred to at the 
close of our last chapter. And once more it may 
be said, their name is legion. Shakspeare, viewed 
in his relation to history, is as extensive a subject, 
in its way, as Shakspeare viewed in his relation to 
human nature : while the kind of work required 
in this department is better fitted to the ordinary 
intellect than that performed by Coleridge or 



194 -^ Course of English Literature. 

Lamb. Without becoming an antiquarian, the 
reader will necessarily seek explanations of obso- 
lete words, customs, and allusions, occurring in 
the great dramatist ; will like to know something 
of the sources and plots of. his plays, and of the 
life and character of the man. The subject, how- 
ever, constitutes a literature in itself; has its 
own divisions of sects and schools ; and can only 
be glanced at in the most superficial way in a 
series like the present. Perhaps it is fair to 
remark that the popular Shakspearian antiquary 
is Mr. Charles Knight ; and that men like Dyce, 
Collier, and Halliwell, can only be "placed" by 
those whose pretensions in the study are some- 
thing like their own, which can be righteously 
affirmed of but few. 

The truth is, that to this hour the learned side 
of the Shakspearian study remains unexhausted, 
and its results undefined. The text of the dramas 
— and their order of production — are equally 
subjects of controversy; subjects on which new 
discoveries may be made at any time, but which 
probably will always admit of more or less de- 



Poetry. 195 

bate. The general truths on such points, as that 
the " Two Gentlemen of Verona" was an early- 
play, or that " Borneo and Juliet" and the " Mid- 
summer Night's Dream" were anterior in date to 
" Othello," " Lear," and the " Tempest," will be 
found by our student in books already specified. 
If his leisure allows him to trace out such in- 
quiries as those by which Collier has corrected 
Malone, well and good. There is a discipline 
of the mind in criticism of this kind, and the 
knowledge which it leads to is only trifling when 
misused. Based upon an affectionate familiarity 
with the poet's works, first, and enlivened by a 
consciousness of their importance, few subjects 
can be made more instructive than a study of 
the historical side of Shakspeare. Call him 
eternal, infinite, and the rest, as much as we 
please, he had a form of human life before him, 
just as the humblest modern dramatist has. He 
learned to paint men and women by seeing Eng- 
lishmen and Englishwomen. He would have 
drawn different people if he had been in another 
country. This may be a truism, but it is one of 

2 



196 A Course of English Literature. 

which the world has not yet seen the full im- 
portance. We get a glimpse of that great time 
and its men in his noble figures ; and it is worth 
remarking that he had come of age before the 
Armada Year. The spirit, the individuality of 
the old English, is alive in his pages; gentle- 
man and courtier, citizen and fool, there they 
are, transfigured, if you like, in his genius, but 
real and living all the same. When we re- 
member this, a natural, not merely antiquarian 
curiosity, makes us read with pleasure even a dull 
book like Douce's " Illustrations." What was the 
domestic existence of the people whom Shakspeare 
drew? What was their " fool?" We know the 
modern animal of that name ; but the old parti- 
coloured one, with the cap and the bauble, what 
manner of man was he ? 

It is not the least pleasing result of such colla- 
teral inquiry, that it brings the reader to think of 
Shakspeare as a man, after all, not as a mere 
prodigy, which is a vulgar kind of creature that 
they show at a fair. Trans cendently great, he 
turns out to be marvellously like other men and 



Poetry. 197 

Englishmen. He begins by doing what he finds 
at his hand to do ; brushes up old plays, while 
learning to make new ones, and earning honest 
bread as an actor ; has his juvenile style, which 
improves, like a common man ; draws his plots 
from novels, chronicles, the last new translations 
from the classics, and so forth, in a business-like 
way; and, finally, prosperous and still English, 
picks out his native town to retire to. He com- 
bines, in fact, the universal and immortal with 
the "parochial" elements of character in a 
wonderful way; and (the mental struggles of 
the sonnets allowed for) the greatest seems also 
to have been among the happiest of English 
poets. 

Hence, according to the old saying about 
countries and their annals, it is probably a good 
sign of Shakspeare's life that his biographies are 
so dull. Research has added a good deal to the 
facts of his biography, but its barrenness still 
remains a common theme of remark. Yet this 
was not from any indifference to his genius, for 
his genius was the cause of his prosperity ; and 



198 A Course of English Literature, 

the language used about Mm on his monument 
and by Ben Jonson, indicates beyond dispute that 
his contemporaries thought him a wonderful man. 
What, then, explains our hearing so little about 
him in the literature and records of his own time? 
Perhaps this cannot be perfectly explained, nor is 
it impossible that we may yet learn more; but 
meanwhile we should remember that, coming in 
an epoch so wonderfully fertile of great writers, 
he was less a miracle than we think ; that litera- 
ture was then a comparatively new thing ; that 
action and government naturally took precedence 
of it; and that a mania for gossiping about 
notabilities was not so marked a weakness in 
those days as now. By studying him in connec- 
tion with his period, we are saved from that in- 
fatuation which has even turned some weak heads, 
and led to their depriving him of his right to his 
own works ! 

The majesty of Shakspeare's genius has thrown 
a lustre on all the dramatists of that time, who, 
in spite of their separate claims to admiration and 
remembrance, would have been less known, as 



Poetry. 199 

fashions changed, but for the transcendent inte- 
rest about everything relating to their great 
contemporary. For his sake, it certainly has in 
great measure been, that Marlow, Dekker, Ford, 
Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, and others 
have been reprinted and read in modern times ; 
though even with the magical associations of that 
memory about them, it may be doubted whether 
they have been read much. Every dramatist of 
so vigorous and fertile a time had some power ; 
bursts of strength, flashes of poetic fancy, are 
found in them all, from Marlow to Shirley. Yet 
the greatest of these writers is as far removed 
from Shakspeare, as the smallest of them is from 
anybody else ; and all together — even taking in 
Ben Jonson, to whom the second place is usually 
given— have not had a tenth part of Shakspeare' s 
influence on mankind. This fact might justify 
a critic in insisting that his reader should read 
Shakspeare, but leaving it open to him to find 
time for " Faustus," "Catiline," the "Duchess 
of Malty," or the " Faithful Shepherdess." Still 
— even assuming, as a principle, that what is best 



200 A Course of English Literature. 

worth, reading should be often read rather than 
that much various matter should be gone through 
— we strongly advise our student to give to the 
dramas of the reigns of Elizabeth and James all 
the time he can. The dramatic effervescence of 
our literature at that period, constitutes an epoch 
in our intellectual history ; displays the inherent 
poetic vigour of the race ; illustrates that manly 
" individuality," the decay of which is feared by 
Mr. Mill ; and is important for other than merely 
literary reasons. For instance — we are much 
mistaken if a reader — having got even moderately 
acquainted with the band of men who flourished 
in those days — is not struck by the variety and 
many-sided vigour of their intellects and charac- 
ters. Ben Jonson was tough, satirical, splendidly 
rhetorical, sometimes pedantically hard ; but he 
wrote the sweetest and tenderest " little things," 
all the same. So, too, Nash, the wag of the 
age, called one of his books " Christ's Tears over 
Jerusalem ;" and, generally, the mixture of man- 
liness, pathos, piety, rakishness, allures by its 
strangeness as much as it fascinates by its power. 



Poetry. 201 

The wild and energetic time exhibited every 
faculty in profusion, so that tragedy was apt to 
run into bombast, and comedy into buffoonery. 
But then the Orson-like strength of the men 
saved the bombast from being maudlin, and the 
buffoonery from being contemptible. Let the 
reader pick out a play — one play, say — from most 
of the Elizabethans for perusal, and see if he 
does not agree with us : or failing that, let him 
turn to Lowell's " Conversations on the Old 
Poets" for a few specimens embalmed in a 
commentary always sympathetic and ingenious, 
though expressed with too much epigram and 
imagery. 

We have early referred to the literary history 
of that period — of which much is to be learned 
from Hallam, from Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and 
Lamb. There have been editions of all the chief 
old dramatists, in modern times — of Jonson, by 
Gifford (with a capital memoir, vindicating "rare 
Ben" from all charges, in Gifford's savage way) ; 
of Beaumont and Fletcher, by Darley ; of Web- 
ster, by Dyce. The Shakspearian antiquaries, tco 



• 



202 A Course of English Literature, 

— sucli as Collier — have copiously illustrated the 
story of the stage and its writers. 

Such was the predominance of the drama in 
the literature of Elizabeth and James, that the 
word " Elizabethan" conjures up theatrical asso- 
ciations at once, in a way which no other literary 
epoch does. Even Spenser's image seems indis- 
tinct, for want of the footlights. Perhaps, of all 
poems of acknowledged first-rate rank, the " Fairy 
Queen" is least read in our time, a neglect of 
which Mr. Kingsley has somewhere complained. 
" Few readers," says Macaulay, " are in at the 
death of the c Blatant Beast.' " Yet Spenser has 
perhaps more directly inspired the great poets, 
who lived since, than even Shakspeare himself. 
He has given his name to a famous species of 
English metre. He had a profound effect on 
Milton, on Thomson, and on Keats ; he supplied 
to Byron the form of his first great poem ; and 
he was one of the favourite poets of Wordsworth, 
who delighted — almost above all other creations, 
in — 

" Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb." 



Poetry. 203 

This is Words worth's own line in a celebrated 
sonnet; and Wilson (who did so much for 
poetic criticism) lavished the most hearty praise 
npon it. 

Spenser, then, has always been a poet's poet 
rather than a popular poet : because the public 
does not read a man for the poetry only, but for 
the excitement or amusement, which poetry, as 
poetry, does not always supply. In the case of 
Shakspeare — is it the poetry only for which he is 
read? Certainly not. There is the story — the 
characters — the humour — the common life — all 
of which are probably more attractive to ordinary 
readers than that subtler element which he shared 
with Spenser and Coleridge. Now, Spenser has 
little of all this. As Johnson said of Richard- 
son, " if you read him for the story you would hang 
yourself." Spenser's beautiful abstractions — the 
shadowy beings of chivalry who glide through the 
dreamy pages of his romantic allegory — are too 
faint to excite human interest. The allegory 
itself is difficult and perplexing. The sentiment 
is antique, and the very language unfamiliar. He 



/ 

/ 



204 ^ Course of English Literature. 

who reads the " Fairy Queen" for pleasure, must 
generally be content to read a little at a time. 
He is not fit for that dreamy and old-world plea- 
sure every day. It is not easy to debark from the 
steamer of modern literature into the little " frigot" 
on the " Idle Lake," where there was — 

' ' No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring ; 
No branch, whereon a fine bird did not sitt : 
No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetely sing ; 
No song, but did contain a lovely ditt." 

{Booh Second, canto vi. ) 

That long-continued strain, mingling feudal 
sentiment with classical inspiration, and sung 
by a voice of the sixteenth century, is apt to be 
drowned by louder modern instruments. But he 
who neglects it is weak, and he who despises it 
is foolish. 

Of Spenser's life we know about as much as of 
Shakspeare's. He was born in London of a 
family of old renown, somewhere about 1553, and 
took his M. A. degree at Cambridge when Shak- 
speare was some twelve years old. He was 
patronised by Sir Philip Sidney and others of the 



Poetry. 205 

Elizabethan court; obtained a grant of forfeited 
land in Ireland, which he lost in a rebellion ; 
and died poor in 1509. He left descendants, one 
of whom became connected by marriage with 
Edmund Burke's family, and some of whom exist 
in our own time in obscurity in Ireland. 

For our present purpose it is not necessary to 
treat of those minor poems of Spenser's which are 
still less read than the "Fairy Queen." So we 
pass from the age of Spenser and the Elizabethan 
drama to the middle of the seventeenth century. 
In the flow and ebb of literature — for we 
have already said that continuous progress is not 
necessarily a law — an age of poets is generally \J 
succeeded by an age of wits. This was the case 
just now. True, the language was becoming more 
modern ; which, in one sense, was a progress ; but 
there were no greater poets than there had been, 
and Milton, who was the greatest, was by no 
means the most popular, of the poets of his age. j 
The really popular men — Cowley, for instance, and 
Waller — were poetic wits. England was still 
poetical, but in a less exalted degree, and in new 



206 A Course of English Literature. 

forms and styles. The poets showed the same 
zeal in carrying out their new styles, and be- 
came inveterate mannerists. Johnson's " Life of 
Cowley " gives an admirable picture of the race 
which intervened between the Elizabethans and 
Dryden ; and during whose ascendancy the early 
poems of Milton were overlooked and neglected. 
We need not repeat here what Johnson has said 
better than any man could say it now. But since 
Waller is a model of what we have called " poetic 
wit " — and since, except his " Go, lovely Rose," 
he is almost forgotten — we shall quote one little 
specimen of his refined and elegant genius. 
Waller, we may premise, was a country gentle- 
man of fortune — a relation of Cromwell and 
of Hampden- — sat in the Long Parliament till 
exiled for a royalist plot ; and died at a very great 
age in the year 1687. The little poem of his we 
now subjoin is called — 

LINES ON A LADY'S GIRDLE. 

" That which her slender waist confined, 
Shall now my joyful temples bind, 
No monarch but would give his crown, 
His arms might do what this has done ! 



Poetry. 207 

It was my heaven's extremest sphere, 
The pale which held that lovely dear, 
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love, 
Did all within this circle move. 

A narrow compass ! and yet there 
Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair ; 
Give me but what this ribbon bound, 
Take all the rest the sun goes round." 

The neatness and prettiness of this makes it a 
favourable specimen of poetic wit. But our space 
does not permit us to make quotations, generally; 
or we should have much pleasure in transcribing 
a poem or two from another man of that age — 
Robert Herrick, who wrote — 

' ' Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 
Old Time is still a-flying." 

Herrick was of a Leicestershire family, and 
born in London in 1591. He held a living in 
Devonshire for twenty years ; was ejected from it 
by the Civil War; published his "Hesperides" 
in 1648; recovered his living after the Restoration; 
and died in some year unknown. He was a poetic 
wit, of a poetry very rich, and of a wit very 
brilliant, as the modern republication of his poems 
makes it easv for the reader to see. Of his con- 



208 A Course of English Literature, 

temporaries, such as Lovelace and Carew (all of 
whom have a kind of brotherly likeness), we need 
only say that each of them has done something 
beautiful, but that whatever the general reader is 
likely to care for in most of them has somehow 
managed to find its way into life again in 
modern collections — of which the best is perhaps 
Mr. Palgrave's " Golden Treasury." Many a 
reader has doubtless quoted — 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage, " 

without much caring to remember that it occurs 
in the poem of poor Richard Lovelace, a ruined 
cavalier. 

It is worth remarking as curious, that while the 
stray fragments of men not well known then, and 
whose very names are forgotten now — that while 
such, we say, still live and get repeated, the great 
chief of the witty school and poetic lion of the 
century, Abraham Cowley, should have sunk into 
such complete oblivion ! If our student, after 
reading Johnson's life of him, should care to 
turn the forgotten poet up, in Anderson's or 






Poetry. 209 

Chalmers's Poets, well and good. He will probably 
agree with Lord Macaulay in recognising his 
"admirable genius." The experience will at 
least be useful, as illustrating the variety of tastes 
we have gone through, and the power of our 
language. But we do not feel justified in dic- 
tating the task to him, while so much remains to 
be read that has prior claims on his attention. 
And here, indeed, we ought to say, that whereas 
there is a great deal of prose, not necessarily of 
the highest class, which is read for the information 
it conveys, nothing need impel the student to spend 
his time over second-rate poetry. 

Our plan now brings us to Milton, who, be- 
longing to the era of which we have been 
speaking, yet stands apart from it, and in a 
certain way from our whole poetry. Shakspeare, 
mighty as he is, belongs to a school, and bears 
the stamp of his own epoch. But there is nothing 
like Milton. His " Paradise Lost " is our only 
great epic poem, since the " Fairy Queen " can 
hardly be described as one. Nor would the public 
tolerate even such respectable imitations of 



210 A Course of English Literature. 

" Paradise Lost " as it has sometimes tolerated 
(nay, even encouraged) of the Elizabethan drama. 
Impossible as both seem, another " Hamlet" is 
less impossible than another " Paradise Lost." 

A glimpse was afforded, before, of the historical 
position of this great poet in our literature. He 
represents, at once, the learning and the spiritual 
grandeur of his time — not the brighter, gayer 
features of it, by reflecting which other men 
became more popular ; by reflecting which {along 
with higher things) Shakspeare had been popular 
in the preceding generation. Hence, Milton was 
comparatively little known in his own time, and 
when he died, was certainly less read as an epic 
poet than Sir Richard Blackmore — whose " Prince 
Arthur " went through three editions in two years 
to " Paradise Lost's " ten. Milton, in fact, as a 
kind of Puritan, was on the less literary side. His 
" Poems " attracted little notice ; he was chiefly 
esteemed for the learning which he evidenced in 
his controversial pamphlets, and which procured 
him the situation of Latin Secretary to the 
Council of State during the Commonwealth. 



Poetry. 211 

"Paradise Lost" appeared some years after the 
Restoration, when everything was against it; 
and, in spite of Dryden's praise, was not adequately 
known and valued before the time of Addison. 
Let us not forget, either, that all the pecuniary 
remuneration Milton ever got for it was ten 
pounds, in two payments extending over two 
years! In 1680, his widow sold the copyright 
for eight ! 

A complete and exhaustive biography of Milton 
is now in course of publication by Mr. Masson. 
But, meanwhile, the sketch in Johnson's " Poets " 
is perhaps the best life of him ; and the criticism 
of " Paradise Lost," there, is masterly. We say 
of " Paradise Lost," because the great Doctor is 
certainly unjust to Milton's other poems. These 
are, in truth, as full of sweetness as his epic is of 
sublimity. What can be more deliciously musical 
than the invocation beginning : — 

" Sabrina fair, 
Listen where thou art sitting, 
Under the glassy cool translucent wave, 
In twisted braid of lilies knitting 
The loose train of thy amber dropping hair." 

p 2 



212 A Course of English Literature. 

Or, than the Spirit's Epilogue in " Comus " — 

" To the ocean now I fly, 
And those happy climes that lie, 1 ' &c. 

What more chastely and gravely beautiful — with- 
out ceasing to be tender — than the sketches of 
life in "1/ Allegro," and "II Penseroso"? 
Passages like these every well-disposed youngster 
ought to have by heart. In fact, such an 
exercise of memory is in the highest degree 
proper in the case of poetry, and was undoubtedly 
the medium by which that art was first transmitted 
among mankind. 




XL 



POETRY. 




HE merits of Milton's great epic have 
been discussed and displayed by very 
eminent masters of our language — by 
Johnson, Hallam, Channing, and Macaulay. 
Many more critics might be enumerated, but the 
truth is, that in our days, the tendency rather is 
for young readers to read critics too much, and 
originals too little. This tendency tells against 
criticism itself, the very object of which is to help 
the student to relish what he has read, and which, 
therefore, can only be properly enjoyed and appre- 
ciated by those who have gone through that 
process. Now, in the matter of " Paradise Lost," 
we are inexorable. It must be read through, and 



214 A Course of English Literature. 

read diligently. An epic is pre-eminently a 
whole, and he who has not read it all can appre- 
ciate none of it. The " Fairy Queen " may be 
enjoyed in books or cantos. A dozen of Shak- 
speare's dramas may teach one to feel and admire 
his genius. But " Paradise Lost " must be 

v studied in its entirety. The divine primaeval 
garden is not to be peered at through a single 
gate ! 

There is no use in shutting one's eyes to the 
fact that the rising generation are apt to think 
"Paradise Lost" heavy. But if this way of 

V estimating literature is to prevail — if the preva- 
lence of story-telling is to spoil whatever is most 
elevated in the intellectual tastes of our youth — 
the sooner we make up our minds to the conse- 
quences the better. Those consequences are a 
degraded literature and a degraded posterity. 
Already some traces of corruption appear^-some 
signs of disease in the leaves of the tree of know- 
ledge, such as have of late years been seen in the 
vines of various lands. The remedy is before us 
in a resort to the old masters; which in every 



Poetry, 215 

case has accompanied a literary revival. " Para- 
dise Lost " must not be tried by the vulgar 
standards of the day, and the pleasure it affords 
is a higher kind of pleasure than our popular 
books afford. The " difficult air " of its high 
region of thought is only trying at first, and is 
the purest in the world ; while once familiar to it, 
we look over vast fields of knowledge lying bright 
in the sunshine of poetry around us. This is not 
Amusement; it is something better. And it 
should be deliberately approached as something 
better. Then will the strain on the attention be 
found to be an exercise of the soul. That austere 
gravity of style, pious earnestness plus classical 
finish, will create the taste for its own beauties. 
There is, in fact, without exaggeration, a pleasure 
to be derived from "Paradise Lost," like that ( 
which is felt in thunder-storms or in angry seas, Lu^m 
or felt by one who has gained a lofty height, and 1 
is for the time raised above his usual equability of 
feeling. But this, though the characteristic, is 
not the only pleasure to be found in our great 
epic. All the human interest of the poem is 



216 A Course of English Literature. 

most exquisitely worked up, and it is a beautiful 
study to observe, with regard to those descriptions 
of Paradise which form such a beautiful back- 
ground to the figures of our two ancestors, how 
they are executed. Compare them with later 
poets, and see with what severity, quiet, and 
finish of expression, so much descriptive charm is 
compatible. This is the intellectual discipline 
which fitly matches the spiritual teaching of this 
immortal poem. 

After leaving Milton, and on our way to the 
poets of our own time, we have few names to 
greet so august as those which we have been 
hitherto dealing with. The latter part of the 
seventeenth century is distinguished by the pre- 
eminence of Dryden, whose historical position 
has been indicated in previous chapters. Much 
of that fine writer and kindly man's work has 
become obsolete in our times ; for he had to please 
his age, even when he knew that he might be 
doing better things, and pleasing your age is not 
necessarily or always the best way of pleasing 
posterity. But the "Alexander's Feast," as 






Poetry. 217 

poetry, and the " Mac-Flecknoe " and "Absalom 
and Achitophel," as satires, must last while 
England lasts. Dryden was not pre-eminently 
and particularly a poet, if we confine that title to 
those whose minds may be called essentially 
poetical ; though this, perhaps, our reader will 
not understand, till he has long familiarised him- 
self with the best poets and critics. He was a 
poet of the most prosaic order of poets, some- 
times giving forth the true flash, but oftener 
showing himself to be a wit and a moralist in 
verse. Thus, he is lower in kind than Shak- 
speare, Spenser, or Milton — perhaps than some 
modern men, though one shrinks from such a 
decision. The student, however, should carefully 
read the books of his already mentioned, as also 
the " Fables ;" and the sense and spirit of the 
old veteran will leave an impression upon him as 
long as he lives. As for biographies of Dryden, 
Scott's is perhaps the best, but Johnson's, with 
Cunningham's notes, is all our student requires. 
Mr. Robert Bell, too, has written a pleasant 
"Life" of him in his edition of the poets — a 



218 A Course of English Literature. 

cheap, portable one — and takes what we think a 
true view of his character. But as an edition 
we cannot conscientiously say that it is what it 
should be ; perhaps we were prejudiced by find- 
ing one of the very best points in the " Hind 
and Panther " spoiled by a misprint. 

Dryden's contemporaries, the Charles II. men — 

" The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease" — 

we shall take the liberty of leaving sleeping in 
their family vaults. We shall proceed at once to 
the school of writers which succeeded to Dryden 
— the Queen Anne school, as they are generally 
called — because, though born in the reigns of 
Charles II. or James II., they were in full activity 
and fame about 1702-14. 

The reader of our poets will be apt to wonder 
at the freedom with which the title of poet was 
bestowed by our ancestors. They called every- 
body a poet who wrote in verse: by the same 
extensive courtesy which makes us call everybody 
a gentleman who wears a tail-coat. Thus Swift — 
though one of the greatest writers this nation 



Poetry, 219 

ever produced — was surely not a poet, nor would 
think of calling himself so, if alive and writing 
just now. Pope has a better right to the name, 
but it would be more accurate to speak of him, 
even, as a moralist and satirist. What had 
Addison, again, in common with the most dis- 
tinctive qualities of Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, 
or Wordsworth ? Or, why should Prior and Gay 
rank as anything but wits ? Our student will do 
well to ponder these points. But, meanwhile, 
our respect for ancient custom is too great to let 
us pass over the Queen Anne men, without view- 
ing them in the rank and order of those with 
whom they have been usually classed. 

Swift, the greatest of these men, came of age 
the year Pope was born, in 1688, a memorable 
and convenient date in every way. A student 
while secretary to Sir W. Temple ; a parson in 
Ireland ; the confidant and supporter of the 
Harley and Bolingbroke ministry ; the Dean of 
St. Patrick's for many years — Swift led a notable 
and important life. Now he is before us as a 
poet, and his poetry consists of moral and satirical 



220 A Course of English Literature. 

pieces : many of them in the eight-syllable or 
Hndibrastic verse. Keen sense — scornful fun — 
these are Swift's characteristics; and he was a 
wonderful master of familiar colloquial rhymes. 
Trusting that every collection that calls itself a 
library in these kingdoms contains Swift's works, 
we recommend our readers to peruse — 1. His 
" Poetry, a Rhapsody." 2. His " Lines on his 
own death." Swift still waits his biographer, for 
the facts of his life are involved in much ob- 
scurity. Meanwhile, the best " Life " of him is 
Scott's. Let the reader take care how he rashly 
forms too harsh an opinion of this great man. 

Addison is, perhaps, better known than any of 
his contemporaries to our age, if only because 
of Lord Macaulay's essay on him. His poetic 
fame rests on the " Cato, " a very chilly 
tragedy, some lines of which, however, have 
acquired proverbial success; on one or two 
epistles or pamphlets in verse; and also (more 
justly) on 

"The spacious firmament on high," 

which has, nevertheless, more of the elegance 



Poetry. 221 

than the devotional nnction of sacred poetry. 
" Cato " we do not prescribe to our stndent ; but 
the " Letter to Lord Halifax " is an excellent 
specimen of the poetry of his school. Addison 
has been fortunate in death as in life. Everybody 
has had a good word for him, and in our own 
age two fine panegyrics of his genius and charac- 
ter have been issued by Macaulay and Thackeray. 
We assume that the reader has read Johnson's 
" Poets," but the standard biography of Addison 
is by Miss Aikin. 

The writings of Pope should by all means be 
studied by everybody who cares for English lite- 
rature at all. It is not that even he, viewed 
solely as a poet, can be said to rank with the first 
class. But though not first-rate in poetry, he is 
first-rate in everything else; above all as a 
writer — as a master of our language. He is 
most poetic in such pieces as the " Epistle of 
Eloise," or "Windsor Forest." But it is as wit, 
moralist, and satirist that he is superior. So 
forcible is his concentration — so exquisite is his 
finish ! We seriously advise the student to get 



222 A Course of English Literature. 

the best passages of the satires and moral epistles 
of Pope by heart, for they are simply models in 
a particular species of writing. In him, the 
language attained the utmost refinement of ex- 
pression of which that species admits. Accord- 
ingly, he was imitated all through the last 
century; and when, at the close of it, the new 
school of Wordsworth began, that school did not 
pretend to rival Pope in his own walk. They 
said, what was true, that for the highest poetry 
we must ascend beyond him; but they never 
shook his position as a didactic writer. Indeed 
that will always be impossible ; and that it is felt 
to be so, is proved by the fact that people no 
longer attempt to write the heroic metre which 
he carried to such perfection. Men who, like the 
late Mr. Thackeray, resemble the Queen Anne 
school in their intellectual characteristics, now 
employ only prose. 

These brief hints may be serviceable to Popian 
students. But there is less reason now than 
there might have been twenty years ago to carry 
them farther, for there has been a very decided 



Poetry. 223 

reaction in favour of Pope and his school during 
late years. Our student will have met with 
many notices of him in the periodical literature 
of the day; and — copies of his works being easily 
accessible — it will now suffice to refer him to 
these : also to Thackeray's " Humourists," and 
the " Life of Pope " (second edition) by Mr. 
Robert Carruthers. ]^ew reasons for admiring 
the subtle and polished cleverness of Pope's verse 
will appear after repeated perusals. 

Contemporary with Pope, being twelve years 
younger, was the famous author of the " Seasons," 
whose lazy, good-natured poetical shade haunts 
the beautiful wood and river about Richmond. If 
feeling for the external world, and the power of 
vividly reproducing it, be (as who doubts they 
are ?) essential qualities of a poet, Thomson must 
be allowed to be the truest poet of his time. The 
" Seasons," we fear, is out of fashion now, like 
other old master-pieces of our letters. And, 
indeed, Thomson's digressions — his moral epi- 
sodes (such as the " Lovely Young Lavinia ") — 
read heavily, and seem artificial to modern taste. 



224 ^ Course of English Literature, 

But his eye for landscape, and his heart for it, are 
of the first order ; and he carries on the line of 
pure poets between Milton and Gray. There is 
some particularly good criticism on Thomson in 
Professor Wilson's works. Perhaps the "Castle 
of Indolence " is even more delightful than the 
finer parts of the " Seasons." All Thomson's 
other works are " sunk" now, as completely as if 
they had been buried with him in Richmond 
Church in 1748. 

Of the many moral poets with whom he was 
contemporary during a long life (1681-1765), 
none, perhaps, was naturally greater than Edward 
Young, the author of the " Night Thoughts." 
The union of sublimity with epigram and fancy 
is the peculiar distinction of that poem, the reli- 
gious sentiment of which, however, has brought 
it many a reader who cares little for these quali- 
ties. His satires, called the " Universal Passion," 
though they preceded the best satires of Pope, 
and though stray lines in them, such as — 

" A fool at forty is a fool indeed," 

have almost passed into a proverb, are now only 



Poetry. 225 

read by the few. The " Night Thoughts," how- 
ever, will always be part of the occasional reading 
of the cultivated English, in those hours when 
more lively writers pall on the taste. 

Need we say much more of one so well-known 
as Gray, except to give him our homage in a 
paragraph ? The " Elegy " we may pronounce 
the best-known poem in the language, though all 
that the chief review of the country said of it, 
when it appeared, was, " The merit of this piece 
amply compensates for its brevity." We have 
nothing more classical, in its simplicity without 
baldness, and its tender melancholy, than this 
poem. In the "Odes," fine as they are, the hand 
of the artist is too much seen. There is, indeed, 
something even artificial about Gray; and Mr. 
Carlyle has gone so far as to call his poetry 
" mosaic." He was certainly, both as a poet and 
a man, fastidious beyond due bounds ; and to get 
a proper relish of his genius it is necessary to read 
his letters. Mason's " Gray " has always held a 
very respectable place in literary history : and 
Johnson's Life of him in his " Poets " has been 



226 A Course of English Literature. 

more attacked than any of Johnson's writings. 
There seems to have been an instinctive anta- 
gonism between these great men. Gray seems to 
have thought Johnson a boor ; and Johnson to 
have thought Gray a prig. 

Collins (born 1720, died 1 759) naturally rises 
to one's memory in conjunction with the favourite 
lyrist of the last century. The " Ode on the 
Passions," were it only for the single line — 

" And Hope, enchanted, smiled and waved her golden hair," 

will live, with our national music,, for ages to 
come. His lines on Thomson, however, are still 
better known and better worth remembering ; nor 
is their tranquil sentiment and placid poetic 
melancholy easy to match anywhere. All these 
choice pieces, fortunately, get blown about the 
world among " extracts," and fall (seeds, no 
doubt, of future poetry) in many distant climes 
where our race is settled. 

Thus, many a reader has no doubt read Cow- 
per's " Toll for the Brave," who does not care for 
his elegant moralising and quaint humour. 



Poetry. 227 

Didactic poetry, indeed, unless kept alive by the 
wit, satire, and fancy of a man like Pope, has 
little to attract the mass of the people, who 
expect (and justly) from poetry, a stirring of the 
blood and kindling of the imagination, which 
reason put into rhyme can never supply. 

Early in the latter half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, it began to be felt that poetry of this last 
description was too predominant in our litera- 
ture. Hence, a reaction against Pope, which long 
caused controversy, but which led to no active 
triumph till the century was nearly out. A time, 
however, was approaching when even such poems 
as the " Traveller," and the " Deserted Tillage " 
— the sweetest, perhaps, of what may fairly be 
called the Queen Anne school — were thrown into 
the background by an entirely new literary 
revival. What was the first inspiration of the 
young men who, coming of age during the French 
Kevolution, carried a revolution into our poetry ? 
Strange to say, it came from an unexpected 
source — from the restoration to light of the old 
popular ballads of the kingdom, commenced by 

q 2 



228 A Course of English Literature. 

Bishop Percy, in 1765. The influence of these 
antique productions — for alluding to which, with 
respect, Addison was ridiculed in his time — which 
had become obsolete, equally among the people 
and among scholars — that influence it was which 
awakened the genius of Coleridge and Words- 
worth. These great poets were the earliest of the 
reformers of our poetry after it had fairly reached 
stagnation in the case of Hayley. But the new 
period was not more important for the poetry 
which it produced than for that which it recalled 
to life. From the time that the new movement 
began, there was one determined set in favour of 
the older idols of our literary worship ; and the 
generation which grew up with Wordsworth and 
Byron, was if anything decidedly unjust to the 
writers of the eighteenth century. Byron, 
curiously enough, kept up a perpetual fight for 
them, with an unconscious instinct, no doubt, 
that the element which he had in common with 
them was the one which would chiefly preserve 
his fame by and by. 

We must necessarily be extremely brief in 



Poetry. 229 

indicating the points to be kept in view by our 
student, in making himself acquainted with the 
poetry of the last age. These are — 1. The deeper 
feeling for nature visible in it, compared with 
what appears in the eighteenth century poetry. 
(Compare Wordsworth and Keats especially — the 
richness and abundance of such feeling they 
show — with those who flourished at any time 
between them and the Restoration.) 2. The 
greater variety of music and metre. (Coleridge 
is a happy instance of their excellence in this 
respect.) 3. The fierce passion, and more vivid 
wit ; as also the wider range of subjects. Scott, 
Byron, and Campbell, may stand for the repre- 
sentatives of these features. Scott embodied 
feudal, Byron oriental life. Byron's very satire — 
see the " Vision of Judgment" — was infinitely 
more poetic than that of Churchill, or Cowper, or 
even Pope. The lyrics of Campbell have a human 
interest, a reality of inspiration, more striking, at 
all events, than belongs to those of Collins or Gray. 
These points might easily be expanded into 
essays, but we forbear. It is for the student's 



230 A Course of English Literature. 

benefit that lie should think them out for him- 
self. Meanwhile, it will be as well if we indicate 
what we think the finest efforts of the great poets 
just named — or flourishing at the same time — 
since we never forget that our reader may not be 
able to read books through. — Here is our list : — 

Wordsworth : " Ode on Immortality " — " Tin- 
tern Abbey" — " She was a Phantom of Delight" 
_« Lucy"— "The Leech Gatherer." 

Coleridge : l i Ancient Mariner ' ' — c t Chris tabel. ' ' 

Byron: Fourth Canto of " Childe Harold"— 
" Manfred "— " Don Juan." 

Shelley: Songs — "Sensitive Plant" — "Lines 
written at Naples"—" The Cenci" (the "Cenci" 
— like some of Browning's — is among the noblest 
poetic dramas of modern times ; but the infe- 
riority to Shakspeare appears from the fact, that 
these fine productions cannot be successfully 
acted). 

Scott:. "Marmion" — Ballads, especially the 
imitation-antique one in the " Antiquary." 

Keats : " Isabel " — Sonnets — Odes. 

Moore: " Irish Melodies." 



Poetry. 231 

Campbell: Lyrics, 

Some of the books illustrative of the literary 
history of these memorable writers have been 
previously referred to. Criticism in abundance 
upon them, by the ablest men of the day, is 
scattered up and down the chief reviews and 
magazines of the last half century ; but little of 
this need be read, inasmuch as it has helped to 
form that general judgment of the poets in ques- 
tion, which our student already enjoys the benefit 
of, at second-hand. Unfortunately, most of these 
poets still want a competent biographer writing 
at a reasonable length. Coleridge has met with 
none such. Lockhart and Moore, in their " Scott " 
and " Byron," are too voluminous, and must live, 
if they do live permanently, by the correspond- 
ence they embody. Lord Houghton has written 
the " Life of Keats " with sympathy and grace. 
The standard biographers of Wordsworth and 
Campbell are Dr. Wordsworth and Dr. Beattie. 

So much of the time of every generation is 
occupied by the writings of its own men, that 
already, no doubt, the poets of the last age who 



232 A Course of English Literature. 

filled Europe with their fame are beginning to 
feel that their heyday of celebrity has passed 
away. But as there was unquestionably more 
good poetry written then than there is now, and 
as our living poets were all more or less educated 
by these their immediate predecessors, we ought 
sturdily to resist the ever-growing temptation to 
underrate our sires. That " prejudice in favour 
of antiquity" of which men once complained, is 
not the predominant prejudice just now. Eather 
is it the other way. But a careful and thought- 
ful reader, who contemplates the vast amount of 
good literature lying behind us, and feels the 
difficulty of knowing it well, is more likely to be 
modest than over- confident about our literary 
future. Such, indeed, we would wish him to be. 
In conformity with our plan we here close our 
papers on the poets. Those now living will be 
noticed briefly in the special chapter to be devoted 
to our contemporaries. 



XII. 



FICTION, AND LIGHT LITERATURE 
GENERALLY. 



la 



T cannot be denied that a peculiar in- 
terest attaches just now to fiction, 
from the quantity of it produced, and 
from the influence which it exerts upon public 
opinion and feeling. The great mass of those 
who read at all, begin by reading novels, essays, 
&c. ; and many people read little else all their 
lives. While, therefore, we shall feel ourselves 
excused, by the very extent of the subject, from 
anything but a sketchy treatment of it, we still 
consider that we are bound not to pass over so 
fertile a branch of the country's literature. We 
shall commence with novels and romances, and 



234 A Course of English Literature. 

in indicating the history of the subject, shall 
point out its relation to other studies and inte- 
rests. 

The origin of those works of fiction, which, 
after undergoing many changes of fashion, con- 
tinue still to form so important a part of our 
public amusements, is a learned rather than a 
popular question. That the old romances were 
traditionary histories, and based upon some 
version of a reality, has been well observed by 
Scott in his essay on the subject. But whatever 
is curious in this inquiry will be found to be 
touched by some of the literary historians already 
recommended to the reader's attention. The 
romance is the older form of prose fiction, the 
novel the later one. The romance deals with the 
wonderful, the novel with common life. In our 
own times, the novel has elbowed its elder brother 
almost entirely out of the world. The great mass 
of our fictions are delineations of the state of life 
and society in which we ourselves exist, not 
borrowing the forms only of the contemporary 
world (as the old romances, by clothing their 



Fiction. 235 

heroes in feudal garb, also did), but confining 
themselves within the boundaries of its beliefs, 
ideas, sympathies. But the novel in this shape 
is quite a modern production ; not so ancient as J 
our poetry or drama, and hardly more ancient 
than the beginning of last century. There would 
be little use in our expatiating on the " Mort 
d' Arthur," or the "Arcadia." We shall begin 
with — and shall confine ourselves to — such books 
as a popular audience may still be likely to read, 
or at least curious to hear about. 

The earliest works of prose fiction which still 
retain their hold on English readers are alle- 
gories : for example, the " Pilgrim's Progress " J 
and the " Tale of a Tub : " very different in 
themselves, but alike in being allegorical. It is 
a form of fiction disused now, and requiring the 
rarest kind of talent for its successful employ- 
ment. Bunyan's strange work could only have 
come from a strange nature, and is unique in its 
odd kind of power and attractiveness. A tinker 
by birth — perhaps even a gipsy by descent — 
filled with the enthusiasm of the age in which 



236 A Course of English Literature. 

the " Eevelations " used to be quoted in Parlia- 
ment, and George Fox wandered about England 
preaching in leather breeches — John Bunyan is 
a singular figure among the scholars, divines, 
and gentlemen of our literary history. Yet few 
works have ever been so popular as the " Pro- 
gress," which he wrote in Bedford jail, and that 
equally amongst the mass and the few. Its 
reality is the great characteristic of the " Pilgrim's 
Progress " — a reality which seems less the result 
of artistic genius, than of the intensity of the 
writer's faith in the unseen world: long com- 
munion with which had made him feel at home 
among spiritual things. Hence the " home-spun" 
character of his style — so justly remarked by 
Southey — is as much a moral as a literary quality 
of Bunyan's ; and, in enjoying his narrative, we 
should remember the light that it throws on the 
intense and wide-spread religiousness of the 
people in the seventeenth century : a full appre- 
ciation of which is necessary to the understanding 
of those times. Southey has written the "Life 
of Bunyan " with his accustomed elegance, but 



Fiction. 237 

with a less vivid relish for the inspired tinker 
than one could wish. Macaulay's " Essay on 
Bunyan" should be read in the same connection. 

In speaking of the "Tale of a Tub" in the 
same sentence with Bunyan's book, we of course 
only intended to mark the early production and 
allegorical character of both. Swift's master- 
piece (for such the " Tale of a Tub " is), though 
not published till 1704, had been written some 
years previously, while Swift was domesticated 
with Sir William Temple. It is full of strength 
— full of the youth and vigour of a great thinker 
and great satirist ; and, in point of fancy and 
illustration, is richer than any of his subsequent 
works. Nothing, in fact, of the Dean's is better 
worth reading; not even " Gulliver's Travels" 
(published in 1726), by which he is now chiefly 
known. " Gulliver," indeed, is more amusing, 
because the incidents are of a more general inte- 
rest, and because the allegory of the "Tale" is 
troublesome to lazy readers. Both, however, are 
among the greatest works of fiction in the lan- 
guage, and unique in their way ; because though 



238 A Course of English Literature. 

Defoe shows the same power of giving verisimili- 
tude to fictitious narrative, he is not to be com- 
pared to Swift in wit, sarcasm, or imagery. 

Defoe's fame has renewed itself of late years : 
a thing always pleasant to remark, and one of the 
few hopeful signs of our literary future. He was 
one of our earliest popular writers, in politics as 
in story- telling. A butcher's son of Cripplegate — 
a dissenter in religion — a practical trader — an 
independent thinker — Daniel Defoe heralded and 
anticipated the modern power of the English 
middle-class. His " Kobinson Crusoe " is perhaps 
the best known of English novels at this day, as, 
unquestionably, it is the oldest novel — strictly so 
called — which still survives. It appeared in 1719, 
when its author was fifty-eight years of age, and 
met with the success which it deserved. Defoe is 
the master of the prosaic-imaginative style ; the 
head of that school which, without the higher 
poetical qualities, produces effects similar to 
theirs ; whiles away the reader out of the every- 
day world, in short, without the use of any 
but every-day means and associations. Crusoe's 



Fiction. 239 

island is as real to the reader as Prospero's : but 
what would Defoe have made of Pros^ero, of 
Ariel, of Miranda ? 

It is painful to recall the struggles and sorrows of 
the stout, good-natured Daniel Defoe ; his failures 
in trade, his persecutions in politics, the pillory in 
which he stood, the poverty which he transmitted 
to his descendants. He still waits his biographer 
— but Mr. Forster's essay gives a vivid notion of 
his life and character, and most of his works have 
been reprinted and made accessible within the last 
few years. The same character distinguishes all 
his fictions — a familiar and homely realism — an 
atmosphere of common life, something solid, 
English, bourgeois, and pertinaciously matter-of- 
fact, like the birth, position, and career of the 
man. In proportion as later writers have shown 
qualities like these, must they be indebted to 
Defoe. He had probably some effect on Swift, 
but the " Tale of a Tub," written before he could 
have taught Swift anything, is richer in genius 
than any of Defoe's books. He died in 1737, some 
years before the two most famous (Pope and 



240 A Course of English Literature. 

Swift) of the Queen Anne writers. With the men 
of letters of his time — though his own acquired 
position was highly respectable — he seems to have 
had little intimacy. Politics divided him from 
some ; but in those days, even a man of genius 
was hardly considered to rank as a man of letters 
if he was not a scholar. This sentiment may 
have injured a really deserving man, here and 
there ; but there was more truth in it than in the 
opposite prejudice so fashionable just now. 

Among the influences tending to enrich and 
popularise English fiction, must be classed the 
sketches of character in works like the " Spec- 
tator." Creations, such as " Sir Eoger de 
Coverley " (a figure not less clearly defined than 
those of the best novels), prepared the way for that 
relish for human portraitures which has made 
certain fancy-creations not less familiar to the 
public than our historic personages. And the 
growth of the novel became one of the leading 
facts of the literature of the eighteenth century. 
Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, and 
Sterne, were as famous as any writers, and still 



Fiction. 241 

more real than most writers of their time. They 
were a new class of teachers — coming up to share 
influence with the essayist — as the essayist had 
come up, before, to share influence with the poets 
of the country. Nor have they been superseded 
in their turn by any later class, though the spread 
of periodicals has modified and diversified their 
activity. 

Of the famous men just mentioned, Richardson 
has suffered more severely from time than any. 
A long-winded, refining sentimentalist — it is 
heavy work, now, trying to read his books — and 
there is little interesting in his character, which 
was tainted with what our great philosophical 
novelist called snobbism. The son of a trader, 
and a trader himself, he had an exaggerated horror 
of everything belonging to common life ; and 
meanly sneered at Fielding, who — sprung from 
princes and warriors — heartily relished even the 
humblest forms of human existence. Those may 
try his " Pamela " or " Clarissa" who have read 
everything else recommended in our volume. But 
Fielding we all must read, and ought to read. 



242 A Course of English Literature. 

He has direct relations with our own day, as one 
of the first delineators of English society, and as 
the literary ancestor of the author of " Vanity 
Fair." There is a class of historic novelists in 
our literature, not writers of "historical novels," 
but men from whose descriptions the philosophical 
history of their times might be written. Fielding 
is pre-eminently one of these. He does not draw 
" ideals " (which are, indeed, unless a Shak- 
speare undertakes them, mere bottles of smoke 
for the most part), but the living English of his 
own generation, in their natural colour, gait, and 
garb. He writes a clear manly English style, 
conspicuously that of an educated English gentle- 
man, never caricatures, never cants, never falls 
into mannerism, and never becomes a bore. 
Accordingly, " Tom Jones," to say nothing of its 
wit and unrivalled story, is a valuable aid to any- 
body who is curious about the times of George the 
Second. It is a picture, but the artist is a 
thoroughly sensible observing man, who under- 
stands what he is delineating, and can reason upon 
it. If anv reader does not see how rare such 



Fiction. 243 

merit is, lie has observed our English fiction to 
very little purpose. 

" Tom Jones " is Fielding's greatest work ; the 
next in rank is his "Amelia." But " Joseph 
Andrews," which he began only in ridicule of 
Richardson, has the same charm of truthfulness, 
good sense, and good nature, as the other two. 
The facts of his life have been carefully gathered 
by Mr. Lawrence, in our own time. It would be 
superfluous to abbreviate them just now, after the 
revived interest in this great man which has 
caused so much to be written of him in the 
periodicals during the last few years. 

Smollett's name has ever since his own time 
been coupled with Fielding's — less from resem- 
blance of genius, than because they both liked 
similar subjects, and because Smollett succeeded 
to a popularity which bore a likeness to that of 
his predecessor. The humorous, adventurous, 
proud Scotchman led a life as various and turbu- •■ 
lent as that of his brother novelist : at sea as a 
surgeon — in London as a journalist — imprisoned 
for libel — harassed by ill-health and debt — he 

E 2 



244 -^ Course of English Literature. 

saw many sides of the world, and sketched them 
with a dashing facility, a free coarse humour 
(tinged with bitterness), full of talent and vivid- 
ness. " Peregrine Pickle " and " Humphrey 
Clinker " are still read for their fun, and Commo- 
dore Trunnion has passed into the national por- 
trait gallery permanently, like Parson Adams or 
Uncle Toby. It is true that Smollett was neither 
so much of a philosopher, nor so much of an artist, 
as Fielding ; and that his works do not leave so 
deep an impression upon the mind. But, except 
Fielding, nobody excels him in depicting common 
life and adventure; and these two men carried 
the art as far as it has been carried since. The 
England of that day — its capital and watering- 
places ; its roads, inns, country-folk, and travel- 
lers ; its fine people and its professional men ; its 
bonifaces and village boozers — is still preserved 
alive in their books. Smollett died at Leghorn, 
as Fielding had died at Lisbon. Had he lived a 
few years longer, he would have succeeded to his 
ancient family estate, which has gone since his 
death to female heirs. 



Fiction. 245 

Fielding and Smollett, whatever their other 
merits, were not poetical nor sentimental novelists 
—the distinctions which belong so remarkably to 
Sterne and Goldsmith. There was a finer element 
in these two — a something sweeter, rarer, and 
more ideal. Nothing better than Uncle Toby 
exists out of Shakspeare, so quick is the sensibi- 
lity, so poetic the humour, with which he is 
drawn. Considering, indeed, how exquisite the 
whole group of the Shandy family is, it is a thou- 
sand pities that Sterne should have given such 
very free license to the natural oddity of his 
humour; should have indulged in a pedantry, 
eccentricity, and extravagance which weary the 
ordinary reader, and frighten away many worthy 
people from a book which contains so much ster- 
ling original genius as " Tristram." Probably, 
no first-rate fiction in our language is so neglected 
just now as " Tristram Shandy," which is all the 
more to be regretted because its kind of merit is 
quite unrepresented in our contemporary litera- 
ture. We have wit not so much below Fielding's, 
but no sentiment like Sterne's, indeed little 



246 A Course of English Literature. 

sentiment that is not spoiled by some kind of 
weakness, cant, or affectation. Now, Sterne him- 
self (as we have just said) is extravagant and 
odd, but this does not spoil his portraits, though 
it interferes with the pleasure with which they are 
looked at. 

Little is known of Sterne's life, and his cha- 
racter is harshly viewed by most critics. The 
facts of his biography may be read in the " Quar- 
terly Review " of a few years back, and interesting 
notices of him are to be seen in Boswell, and in 
Gray's Letters. Johnson's characteristic " Why, 
no, sir ! " when Goldsmith called Sterne " a dull 
fellow/' deserves to be held in remembrance. 
Goldsmith had the weakness of envy, however 
kind he naturally was, and as he thus detracted 
from Sterne in conversation, so he had sneered at 
him in print. 

Goldsmith's kindness, however, was so rich 
and warm, that it has acted like heat in keeping 
a peculiar bloom on the flower of his reputation. 
He has had the fame which he earned by his 
works, and an additional fame due to the zeal 



Fiction. 247 

which his friendly nature has inspired. But there 
is another thing to be allowed for in discussing 
the zeal with which Goldsmith's fame has been 
supported of late years. Everybody has a good 
word for that kind of weakness in a great man 
which exposes him to their pity, and puts them 
on a kind of level with him. " Poor Goldy," 
they say, with a comfortable feeling, of which 
they are half-conscious, that they could have 
patronised and been good to this wonderful im- 
mortal after all. Now, this is no doubt very 
human and amiable, spite of the tinge of gratified 
self-importance in it ; bat, then, people are also 
apt to treat the strong characters less justly, from 
a similar feeling. Swift, for instance, is disliked 
and abused from a consciousness that he would 
have flung away patronage with disgust, and re- 
buked impertinence with scorn and sarcasm ; and 
by sheer dint of his strength never gets fair play. 
But we digress. 

The " Lives " of Goldsmith by Forster, and 
Irving, and Prior (the last of whom had the start 
in bringing modern research to bear on his bio- 



248 A Course of English Literature. 

graphy), leave little to be desired in the way of 
information about the author of the " Yicar of 
Wakefield." That novel is, we suppose, the most 
popular in the language — " Eobinson Crusoe " 
alone excepted. It would be superfluous to echo 
its praises here ; but the observing reader should 
mark the difference in its kind of merit from that 
of "Humphrey Clinker" or "Tom Jones." Its 
beauty is more ideal than that of these books, and 
owes more than they do to the inner or senti- 
mental life of the author. Hence, the story is 
more improbable, and the truth to nature which 
distinguishes it is rather truth to moral and poetic 
nature than to common life. It is not, for in- 
stance, a picture of the times so literally as 
" Tom Jones " is. And here we may remark 
that a distinction like this indicated between 
Goldsmith and Fielding is one which constantly 
re-appears among eminent writers of fiction. 

After the influence of Goldsmith and Sterne, 
following that of Fielding and Smollett (and 
these four great novelists had the best part of last 
century to themselves), Miss Burney fills up the 



Fiction. 249 

interval between them and/ Sir Walter Scott. 
The publication of her " Diary/' and the conse- 
quent " Essay" by Lord Macaulay, have brought 
her name into fashion again ; but while so much 
of our older light literature lies neglected, we 
cannot urge on our student the perusal of her 
works. After her day, novel-writing seems to 
have stagnated. A stupid, conventional kind of 
romance prevailed, which was extravagant with- 
out passion, and wild without invention. Nature 
had disappeared from fiction as from poetry ; and 
those who tried to restore it tried through the bad 
medium of German tales or stories of horror, in 
which there was nothing of the true or the 
sublime. At last, Miss Edgeworth fell back on 
common life, common sense, and human nature ; 
and presently the "Author of Waverley" rose 
upon the Northern horizon, and filled the atmo- 
sphere with a light and colour full of freshness, 
beauty, and wholesomeness. Naturally a poet, 
at once in eye and in heart, Scott had been trained 
to depicting life by the study of history, and by 
the relish for society and the world which be- 



250 A Coarse of English Literature. 

longed to his genial and manly temperament. 
In Scottish life, he had a field almost wholly 
unknown to the reading world before his time, 
and the union of a new subject with a new style 
in the person of a great writer was soon found to 
be irresistible. The excitement produced by his 
novels was something of which we have hardly 
an adequate conception just now, and it was 
European. They were looked for, as Carlyle 
finely says, " like a harvest " every year. And, 
after all their sale, new editions are going off while 
we write. They have had important historical 
consequences ; for they have helped to renovate 
history, at once as a study and as an art ; and 
not only here, but on the Continent. Dr. Arnold, 
Lord Macaulay, Sir Archibald Alison, owe no 
less to Sir Walter than Lamartine, Thierry, or 
Hugo. And the general revival of a feeling for 
the historical-picturesque visible in other studies, 
is also largely due to Scott's influence. 

All the novels of such a man ought to be read 
by everybody who cares for novels. Sir Walter 
is not a novelist of one kind of merit only — a 



Fiction. 251 

story-teller with poor characters, or a portrait- 
painter who cannot narrate; but has a vast 
range of artistic power as well as a great degree 
of it. His Andrew Fairservices are as well done 
as his Eebeccas. His art is based upon his 
goodness, and none of his powers get the better 
of that excellent, homely, and not too common 
quality. He is not so deep as Shakspeare, but 
he is as deep as, and more lifelike than, any 
other person. For pictorial history, he has done 
more than anybody but Shakspeare. His his- 
torical novels are a class by themselves, like 
Shakspeare' s historical plays. 

With Sir Walter closes the history of fiction ; 
excepting so far as it requires notice in our 
promised chapter on contemporaries. His excel- 
lent biography has been spoken of before. 

It remains for us to complete the sketch 
required by the title of the present chapter, by 
saying something specially of the other branches 
of English light literature. If we make our 
observations brief, it is not only that we wish to 
plead the old excuse of "want of space/' but 



252 A Course of English Literature, 

that so nmcli is popularly written about light 
literature that there is not such pressing occasion 
for a long discourse on it as on other branches of 
the Course. 

Light literature, after fiction has been with- 
drawn from it, comprises Essays, Letters, Satires, 
Comedies, and Epigrams ; on some specimens of 
most of which it has come in our way to touch in 
previous pages. 

The Essay is a species of composition in which 
our writers have attained great eminence. Bacon 
himself has a place in light literature, not only 
from his weighty and sparkling essays, but from 
his compiling a book of jests or sayings. The 
style of both works is of the antique gravity, 
and fatiguing to thoughtless and silly people. 
Modern style begins with the Prefaces of Dry- 
den and Essays of Cowley, followed in the next 
generation by the " Spectator," which is still 
unsurpassed in its peculiar combination of wise 
reflection and ease. The moralising of some 
u Spectators " is too sermon-like, we suspect, for 
modern readers ; but all the personal sketches — 



Fiction. 253 

the sketches of character — retain their charm, 
and it is one sign of a corrupted and cockney 
taste not to feel that charm. 

The example of excellence set by Addison and 
Steel led to a variety of papers being published 
during the last century, most of which are for- 
gotten now. But the generation which renewed 
the freshness of our poetry renewed that of the 
essay likewise, and everybody who reads anything 
reads Lamb. With equal pleasantness of style 
and not less eye for life, Lamb had also the 
advantage over the Queen Anne men, of a subtler 
vein of poetic sentiment. He has the advantage 
which Fuller's age had over Addison's ; and at 
the same time, that which Addison's age had 
over Fuller's. It will be an agreeable task to a 
student of light literature to ascertain the truth 
of this for himself, since our limits make it 
impossible that we should evolve it now. 

In Letters we have for our amusement, when 
so inclined, the various collections of correspon- 
dence to be found in the works of Pope, Swift, 
Gray, Chesterfield, Walpole, Byron, and many 



254 A Course of English Literature. 

others. These should be read — and this, we say 
again, is true of light literature generally — at the 
same time that one is employed in reading the 
graver writers of the same epochs. To under- 
stand the Eevolution, it is a great advantage to 
know what kind of men the generation who made 
it were in their private lives, favourite amuse- 
ments, and literary tastes. And so of all periods 
whatever. Thus, Chesterfield's " Letters to his 
Son " are very valuable, because they reflect the 
tone of thinking among men of his own class and 
habits, who were an important class in the country. 
Walpole's, again, are equally valuable, and even 
more amusing, from the greater accumulation of 
detail, since his main object was to send news, 
while Chesterfield's was to send advice. The same 
truth may be preached of other Letters ; but of 
course the student must consider when the writer 
is writing for effect and when from his heart. 
Pope's Letters, for example, are among the most 
artificial that we have — are written as if he was 
writing with a moral looking-glass opposite him. 
Satires have not only a reflective value — that is, 



Fiction. 255 

are useful in reflecting their periods ; they also 

keep alive the great moral truths on which good 

satire is based, and teach ns how best to " shame 

the fool and lash the knave " in every succeeding 

generation. Folly and knavery change, but fools 

and knaves are eternal; so satire, too, changes 

its forms and styles,' but never ceases to exist. 

Thus, it began in this country by employing the 

fine old heroic metre of Bishop Hall — was carried 

out with swinging vigour and bluff humour by 

Dryden — polished and perfected into exquisite 

epigrams by Pope — re-vivified (after Dryden's 

mode) by Churchill — imitated with truthful zeal 

and lively talent in " English Bards " by Byron. 

Now, that fashion of writing satire is gone by 

for the time, but satire embodies itself in the 

novel or the article. In verse it takes, or did 

take till quite lately, a wider sweep : as in the 

u Vision of Judgment," or in Hood's admirable 

" Epistle to Eae." There is not a more amusing 

branch of light literature, nor one the study of 

which (under due restraint) may be more usefully 

pursued. 



256 A Course of English Literature. 

Comedy, again, is peculiarly an art which 
paints manners and illustrates social history. 
But, on the whole — whether it be that our comic 
writers have been fettered by stage necessities or 
not — few of our comedies remain in a flourishing 
state of popularity. We have spoken of Congreve 
before, and may refer to Leigh Hunt's edition of 
him and his school. Sheridan, the wittiest of 
all dramatists excepting Congreve, is less out of 
fashion ; and the epigrams of the " School for 
Scandal " endure and sparkle like precious stones. 
Douglas Jerrold, in our own time, had this epi- 
grammatic faculty beyond nearly all contempo- 
raries. 

Of those lighter kinds of humorous writing 
which comprise epigrams, squibs, &c, little need 
be said ; since any one with a taste for reading is 
sure early to find his way to them for himself. 
Congreve was a great master of sparkling verse ; 
is hardly surpassed, indeed, except by Moore. 
But we cannot expect our reader to go back to 
Anstey, or Hanbury Williams, or Cleveland ; and 
shall conclude this notice of the more amusing 



Fiction. 



257 



sorts of literature, by indicating a few books 
which he will find useful in studying them. 
These are Scott's "Memoirs of the Novelists," 
Thackeray's " Humourists," Jeaffreson's " Novels 
and Novelists," and a volume called " Satire and 
Satirists " by the author of the present Course. 





XIII. 



PHILOSOPHY.— BACON— HOBBES. 




,- ^pro- 



philosophy," says Coleridge 
perly belongs the Education of the 
mind." We set off with this saying, 
because it concisely expresses the utility of that 
study to which our plan now brings us. If 
poetry have for its function to kindle, discipline, 
and refine our natures through the emotions — 
which by the agency of the subtle force of music 
it is peculiarly able to do — so, philosophy deals 
with our intellectual part more directly and ex- 
clusively. It deals with laws, reasons, and 
causes ; with the spiritual machinery, in fact, of 
the universe. And thus, though English phi- 
losophy is a part only of English literature, it is 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 295 

that part of it by the standard of which all the 
others must be measured. History, poetry, 
fiction, have their laws pointed out to them by 
the philosopher coming in the character of critic. 
The mind and heart are studied by him, and their 
action interpreted, in the books which he devotes 
to metaphysics and morals. Philosophy, which 
takes cognisance of all other subjects, thus claims 
the highest place to itself, and its masterpieces 
in every literature rank with the first-class works 
in it. In English literature, we talk of Bacon in 
the same breath with Shakspeare ; of Berkeley 
along with his friends Pope and Swift, and so on. 
The philosophers, in the nature of things, are 
never so popular as other great writers, but they 
are not the less influential. They feed the popu- 
lar writers with thought. If we could find out 
and point out, exactly, what men like Macaulay, 
Mackintosh, Sydney Smith, &c, have owed to 
Bentham or Locke, what other kinds of writers 
have owed to Coleridge or Berkeley, their debt 
would probably appear far greater than is cur- 
rently supposed. Our favourite doctrines — as- 

s 2 



260 A Course of English Literature. 

snmed in every article and every public meeting 
as grounds of belief — could be traced, originally, 
to isolated thinkers, whose books are known only 
to few, and whose scanty biographies too clearly 
indicate the modest degree of importance which 
they enjoyed in that world which they laboured 
to teach. 

Such considerations would be enough, if any 
considerations were ' wanted, to show the im- 
portance to our student of some acquaintance 
with his country's philosophy — a study which 
essentially disciplines the mind. It is not our 
place here to preach any system — to support any 
school — of philosophy : only to give the student 
some little help (according to our space) in 
knowing something of schools and systems for 
himself. 

And first, let us repeat the advice once before 
given in this Course. Let us recommend the 
reader to get a general view of the history of the 
subject from the best sources. Such are the two 
Dissertations by Dugald Stewart and Mackin- 
tosh, in the first volume of the " Encyclopaedia 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 26 1 

Britannica." Stewart was no less elegant as a 
writer, than acute as a metaphysician. Mackin- 
tosh's favourite subject all his life was moral 
philosophy, and we have already commended his 
frank, copious, and on the whole agreeable style. 
These treatises supply, so to speak, a knowledge 
of the land-marks and general features of the 
country; and this is always the mind's first 
want. Arriving in a district, you wish to learn 
the chief objects ; the relative sizes of places, and 
their relations, geographically, to each other; 
you can then pick out which place you please to 
settle in, without being altogether ignorant of 
the rest. You may not — to apply this iilustra- 
tration to the case before us — have time to read 
both Locke and Hobbes, but it is necessary to 
know how they stand related to each other. 
Always get up the pedigree of your subject, 
whatever link you mean to try and learn. 

Together with the dissertations above-men- 
tioned, may be taken the " Biographical History 
of Philosophy " (the latest edition), by Mr. 
Lewes, a most shrewd, accomplished, and plea- 



262 A Course of English Literature. 

sant writer. He fills in the genealogical tree of 
the subject with portraits ; he connects the study 
with the men. The only other hook of the kind 
we shall recommend just now, is Whe well's 
" Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in 
England "—a book of very moderate dimensions, 
sketching clearly and learnedly the progress of 
that branch of philosophy amongst us. 

All these works should, as a matter of course, 
be found in all " Institutes," " Athenaeums," 
" Institutions," or what not, pretending to be 
places of literature throughout the kingdom. 
There is no excuse for their absence, and the 
supply of novels should be cut off, if need be, till 
they are procured. 

Let us now attempt a brief, rapid sketch of 
such writers as it is of the first importance for 
students of this branch of the Course to have 
some acquaintance with. 

The father of Philosophy — its patriarch — in 
England, as we all know, was Francis Bacon, 
Lord Yerulam and St. Alban's, about whom 
Pope wrote an ugly and hackneyed line which we 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 263 

shall not quote, and who bequeathed in his will 
"his name and memory" to "men's charitable 
speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next 
ages." His civil works and his life have been 
mentioned in these papers before. He was of 
first-rate ability in active as in speculative pur- 
suits — a lawyer, a statesman, an orator, a talker, 
as well as a great reformer in philosophy. Shak- 
speare's genius was not more various than that of 
this great contemporary of his, who never seems 
to have known him nor mentions him in his 
works. Bacon died ten years after the poet, on 
the 9th of April, 1626. 

Bacon wrote his chief philosophical works in 
Latin, it being his opinion, as he says once, that 
" these modern languages would one day play the 
bankrupt with books." He even had the "Ad- 
vancement of Learning " turned into Latin when 
he wanted to use it as a part of his great work, 
the " Instauratio." But we need not say that 
his writings may be read in translations — which is 
all the more gratifying when the matter rather than 
the style (which last loses most in translation) is 



264 A Course of English Literature. 

the reader's object. His own first sketch of the 
" Advancement," in his own English — a fine spe- 
cimen of the antique richness and brilliance of 
his manner — has been reprinted of late years in 
a very cheap form, and may serve as a good 
introduction to some acquaintance with his way 
of thinking. 

Our philosopher — a practical absolutist, almost, 
in politics — was in philosophy a reformer. He 
wanted to revplutionise the whole course of study, 
the very modes of thought in the world, and this 
passion, which was alive in him even as a boy, 
burned in his bosom all through the course of 
ambition to which consciousness of talent, his 
hereditary position — and we suppose a natural 
love of power — impelled him. His standing 
complaint was of the waste of mind in the world, 
his life-long labour how to employ it practically 
and usefully. He was a poetic and far-sighted 
utilitarian of a superior kind — the prophet and 
herald of modern industrial England, with its 
high farming, improved science, whirring mill- 
engines, and " reading public." This was the 



Ph Hosqphy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 265 

great Francis's point of view. Lord Macaulay in 
his famous essay on him, has pushed the value 
of Bacon's utilitarianism as far as it can go. 
But he need not have degraded all other philoso- 
phies so much, in doing so. Bacon himself 
seems only to have contemplated a re-action 
against what he thought the barren and profitless 
word-spinning of the generations previous; nor 
was he likely — had he lived to see a practical 
philosophy going on in full activity — to have 
confined the human mind too exclusively to one 
side, though that was the most " profitable " 
side, of speculation. His was too large a ca- 
pacity, too great a nature, for such narrowness. 

But he worked, like all other great men, at 
enforcing the truth which he found neglected by 
his age, and the importance of which to posterity 
he foresaw. He wanted to produce a renewal 
(" Instauratio ") of human knowledge, which he 
conceived to have fallen into corruption from the 
defective way in which knowledge was sought. 
Having, in the beginning of the " Instauratio," 
treated of the means bv which knowledge could 



266 A Course of English Literature. 

be increased (whence its title, " De Augmentis ") 
and of the branches into which it was naturally 
to be divided, he proceeds to his " Novum Or- 
ganum " — that is, to the method to be employed 
in adding to knowledge by experiments. This 
" Novum Organum" is the most famous of his 
philosophical works ; it consists of a series of 
aphorisms in two books, strung together like 
beads, and each advancing the general truth 
which he aimed to teach. Let us open it together, 
and steal a glance at the philosopher's thoughts 
and intentions. He starts off with the memor- 
able saying which forms aphorism first :— 

" Man, the servant and interpreter of nature 
{natures minister et interpret) does and under- 
stands just as much as he has observed of nature's 
order in fact or in thought ; and he knows and 
can do no more." 

This is the key-note. He desired to teach men 
that they could only learn by a wise, careful, and 
critical study of facts. Hence he goes on, in the 
ninth aphorism, to observe that — 

" The cause and root of all the evils in the 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 267 

sciences is this one, that while we falsely wonder 
at and extol the powers of the human mind, we 
do not seek its true aids (vera auxilid)." 

Proceeding to remark that the logic in use in 
his time was better fitted for the strengthening of 
error than the search of truth (Aph. xii. lib. i.), 
he undertakes to show how the whole search of 
truth might be pursued in a wiser and surer way. 
That " true and untried way " as he calls it, is to 
acquire by sense, and from particular facts, axioms 
for one's guidance, and then to ascend, continu- 
ously and step by step, to the highest generalisa- 
tions (Aph. xix. id.). A sober, patient, and grave 
intellect will keep aloof from all hasty generalisa- 
tions, and advance to a knowledge of nature by 
degrees. For there is no little difference between 
the idols of the human mind and the ideas of the 
divine mind, the true signs and impressions of 
the latter made in things created, as they are 
found (Aph. xxiil). 

Bacon, in fact, considered that nature was not 
studied in the right kind of way ; that men came 
to conclusions without sufficient experiment ; and 



268 A Course of English Literature. 

that there must be a reform from the very roots. 
The " idols of the mind "as he calls them — that 
is, the false and misleading notions which had 
got hold of the Imman intellect, he divides as 
follows, previous to showing how they are to be 
removed by a true induction : — 

1. Idols of the Tribe. — These belong to human 
nature itself — to the tribe or race of man. For 
instance, it is falsely asserted (says Bacon) that 
human sense is the measure of things ; whereas, 
on the contrary, all perceptions, as well of sense 
as of the mind, are according to the analogy of 
man and not according to the analogy of the 
universe. "And the human intellect is as an 
unequal mirror to the rays of things, which mixes 
its own nature with the nature of things and 
distorts and spoils it." (This is one of those 
happy images for which the philosopher is justly 
admired.) 

Idols of the Cave or Den. — These represent the 
individual man's peculiar weaknesses — hindering 
him in the search after Truth. 

Idols of the Forum. — These are the prejudices, 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 269 

similarly mischievous, which men derive from 
social intercourse — from the world. 

Idols of the Theatre. — These have passed into 
the human mind, from the dogmas of philo- 
sophers, " because," says Bacon, " as many phi- 
losophies as there have been received or found, 
so many plays do we consider to have been acted, 
which have made scenic and fictitious worlds." 

Thus did Bacon caution the human intellect 
against its various temptations and weaknesses, 
that it might come purified to the task of dis- 
covering truth, or " interpreting nature " by fit 
experiments. His whole object was to enforce 
the necessity of a careful Induction from facts 
discovered by experiment, with the ultimate aim 
of benefitting the actual condition of mankind. 
In this aim he conceived the originality of his 
philosophy to consist, and though the classics had 
been the instruments of his own education, he 
treats the classical philosophers with slight rever- 
ence. Their labours, he says, all tended to dis- 
putation rather than to discovery (See " Novum 
Organum," Aph. lxxi.), and they were as much 



270 A Course of English Literature. 

sophists as those rhetoricians on whom they 
bestowed the name. . Like boys, they could 
" chatter," but could not " generate ; " and time 
in bringing down their works had, like a river, 
floated the light things, while submerging the 
more valuable. Accordingly, our schools and 
colleges, he thought, impeded the progress of the 
sciences ; and in the study of the sciences our 
chief error was in the very way of setting about 
it. Man's empire over things consists in arts and 
sciences alone, and Nature is only governed by 
obeying her. This is one of the famous maxims 
which the "Novum Organum " has bequeathed 
to the employment and admiration of posterity. 

In Book Second of the "Novum Organum," 
Bacon proceeds to show how his proposed system 
of induction is to be carried out, and illustrates 
it by examples. No adequate detail of the pro- 
cess can be given here, but a few hints on the 
nature of it may be thrown out to encourage the 
reader to seek it in the work itself. To generate 
or superinduce a new nature or new natures in 
any given body is the work of human power ; to 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 271 

discover the true form or differentia (that is, the 
distinguishing part of the essence) of a given 
nature, is the work of human knowledge* " Truly 
to know is to know by causes." He who knows 
the cause of any nature (say heat, for example) 
only in certain subjects, has imperfect knowledge. 
So with him who only knows its effect on certain 
materials. He who knows its " efficient and ma- 
terial cause," only, can go on to more discoveries. 
But he who knows the " forms " (formas, or ulti- 
mate general laws) can get hold of a unity of 
nature in dissimilar materials, and proceed to 
make new discoveries altogether. Wherefore, 
from the discovery of "forms," follows a " true 
contemplation and free operation : " — the " form " 
of a nature being such, that, given it, the nature 
follows. The search after these forms, which are 
eternal and immovable, constitutes metaphysics 
— that of the intermediate laws, belonging to 
the common course of nature, but not eternal 
and fundamental — constitutes physics. — " Novum 
Organum," lib. 2. ix. 

Having made this division, sub-dividing and 



272 A Course of English Literature. 

treating of, meanwhile, under headings which we 
do not repeat, the intermediate laws just men- 
tioned — Bacon goes on to show how the interpre- 
tation of nature is to be conducted, so as to 
obtain : — 

1. Axioms derived from experiment. 

2. New experiments deduced from the axioms. 

We have to obtain, he says, a good and suffi- 
cient natural and experimental history as the 
foundation of things, and that is to be got by 
a true and legitimate induction. In achieving this, 
and prosecuting the search of " forms," we must 
successively examine each " nature " in a series 
of ways, taking all the cases as instances (in- 
stantice) of its showing certain qualities, and 
examining them in groups. 

For example, suppose we take the case of 
heat. We begin with the " instances agreeing " 
(instantice quce conveniunt) in the nature of heat, 
as rays of the sun, hot vapours, subterranean 
air, skins of animals, &c, &c, and classify them 
under a table. Then we go on to the "nega- 
tive" instantice, that the rays of the moon are 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 273 

not warm ; that the rays of the sun do not make 
warm in the middle region of the air, &c., &c., 
for the study of which facts Bacon points out 
experiments which ought to be made. His third 
Table is made from instantice which exhibit the 
" nature " sought after, more and less ; a com- 
parison being made of the increase and decrease 
in the same subject; and this he calls the 
" Comparative Table, or Table of Degrees." 

When all the instantice have been examined, 
an induction is to be made from them: the 
rejection or exclusion of all those not agreeing 
with the " nature " which has been investigated, 
being rigidly oarried out. Of this task, too, in 
the case of heat, Bacon gives a specimen, and 
then advances to what he calls the "first 
harvest," certain conclusions about heat sup- 
posed to be the fruit of the process of inquiry. 

But this is only a part of his elaborate scheme 
and method. He now goes on to supply "fur- 
ther aids to the intellect" in the "interpretation 
of nature;" it being his object to put the human 
intellect on a level of equality with things and 



274 A Course of English Literature. 

nature (Apk. xix. lib. 2). It is impossible to 
follow him into these details, into his division of 
instantice into classes, twenty-seven in number. 
Enough, if the slightest taste of his work has 
been afforded to a curious reader : and the work 
itself, we may remind him, is unfinished. 

Bacon's own scientific attainments in natural 
history are not highly valued by modern science, 
of course. But that is not his merit. His merit 
lay in preparing the way for discoveries — in 
inspiring the feeling for inquiry — in pointing out 
the proper methods of it : all which were pre- 
eminently signs of genius in a man in that age, 
and perfectly wonderful when we remember his 
excellence in other regions of thought and know- 
ledge ! But, in addition to all this, is his merely 
literary merit — his excellence as a writer — his 
imagination, wit, noble and stately style — his 
compressed and antithetic maxims. So that his 
general influence on our national mind and on 
that of the Continent, amply entitles him to a 
place among the very greatest men that the 
world has seen or known. 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 275 

Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, born in 1588 
(the Armada Year) knew Bacon while a young 
man, and was, it is said, associated with the 
veteran philosopher. He was early attached as 
tutor to one of the Cavendishes, and spent most 
of his very long life under the protection of that 
family. He travelled a good deal, and when the 
Civil War broke out retired to Paris. All his 
life was devoted to speculation, and the theo- 
ries which he broached in morals and politics 
exercised a great influence on his times, and 
have more or less continued to do so ever since. 
No man has been more fiercely attacked than 
Hobbes — who was a true, sturdy Englishman 
in the independence with which he issued the 
most startling doctrines — and who showed a vein 
of our old satirical humour in defending them. 

Hobbes based all his other views on those 
which he had formed of human nature, and 
which give him his place among philosophers. 
He began his investigations independently, being 
of opinion " that they which have heretofore 
written thereof, have not well understood their 

T 2 



276 A Course of English Literature. 

own subject." (Hobbes on "Humane Nature," 
chap. 1.) Beginning, therefore, at the beginning, 
he defined " man's nature " to be the " sum of 
his natural powers," and classified his " mental 
powers" as cognitive ', conceptive, or imaginative, 
and motive. Our senses receive impressions from 
objects without, and deal with them by the 
cognitive faculty which receives their images. 
Our conceptions succeed each other in an order 
not determined by our own choice, but according 
as they have been produced by the senses. We 
give names to them to help us in remembering 
them, and so advance to becoming capable of 
science. All knowledge is of two kinds — " ori- 
ginal" which we get from sense and remember ; 
u science " or a knowledge of propositions and 
names, derived from understanding. Both are 
only experience — the first, that which we get 
from things without; the second, that which 
we get from the proper use of names in 
language. Truth and a true proposition is all 
one. Knowledge is evidence of truth. Con- 
science is a man's opinion that there is evidence 



Philosophy. — Bacon — Hobbes. 2jJ 

of the truth of that which he asserts on his con- 
science. 

The motive powers are those of the heart, 
acted on by those received through the senses, 
in the head ; all conceptions being motions in the 
head caused from without When they favour or 
help the vital movement they are called pleasant, 
and the objects that so act are called pleasant. 
When they hinder it they are called painful. 
Objects are thus objects of love or aversion, ac- 
cording as they produce one or other motive 
within, and every man calls that which pleases 
him good, and that which displeases him evil. 
There is no such thing as absolute goodness 
without relation — things being only good rela- 
tively ; even the goodness of God being his 
goodness to us as we apprehend it. 

On a substratum like the propositions thus 
briefly noticed and condensed, Hobbes founded 
what is called a "selfish philosophy" — making 
every individual's own regard for himself the 
maiD-spring of his moral system. " Pity," says 
Hobbes, " is imagination or fiction of future 



278 A Course of English Literature. 

calamity to ourselves proceeding from the sense 
of another man's calamity. When it lightens on 
such as we think have not deserved the same, the 
compassion is greater, because there appeared 
more probability that the same may happen to 
us." (" Humane Nature," chap. 9, sect. 10.) 
And so with the other passions. Our love is 
desire of a certain object for our own sakes. 
We laugh from a feeling of superiority over 
somebody. 

Having evolved these doctrines in the " Human 
Nature," Hobbes applies them in his Treatise on 
the Body Politic. Men are naturally equal, and 
have an equal right to all things. Being of 
various strength and passions, yet u every man 
thinking well of himself, and hating to see the same 
in others" they naturally come to blows. The 
" Estate of man in this natural liberty is the 
Estate of war" {Be Corp. Polit. chap. i. 11). 
And this being so, "irresistible Might in the 
State of Nature, is Right" (chap. i. 13). 



XIV. 




PHILOSOPHY— CONCLUDED. 

AN being, according to Hobbes, a selfish 
animal, whose natural state is one of 
war, and being also born in a state of 
equality with all other men, arrives at civil insti- 
tutions by sacrificing some of his rights for cer- 
tain advantages derived from the new state into 
which he enters. Might being Eight in the ori- 
ginal condition, one man might acquire the rights 
of "conquest " over another, just as he has over 
the lower animals. (See "Corp. Polit.," Part 2, 
cap. 3.) Different forms of government arise 
among men, either by conquest, or by " cove- 
nant" between one another — such as monarchy, 
aristocracy, and democracy. Of these govern- 



280 A Course of English Literature. 

ments, Hobbes much preferred monarchy, as 
attended with less " inconvenience " from the 
passions of human nature than any other. 
" Other governments, " says he, " have proceeded 
from the dissolution thereof (viz., of monarchy), 
caused by the rebellious nature of mankind, and 
be but pieces of broken monarchies cemented by 
humane wit" — a characteristic illustration, in the 
philosopher's shrewd ingenious way. In fact, 
Hobbes was a professed philosophical absolutist, 
and never shrunk from any conclusions to which 
his principles led him. He is one of the boldest 
as well as acutest of English reasoners. But 
though so apparently orthodox about monarchy 
(and Charles II., it is said, was a Hobbist) other 
features of his philosophy have made him the 
great scandal of the orthodox and one of their 
favourite targets, to this day. He has been 
looked on as the incarnation of " materialism," 
the embodiment of what are called " low views of 
human nature ; " and he is certainly one of those 
writers who have most effectively attacked the 
freedom of the will. All these are good reasons 



Philosophy — concluded. 281 

why Hobbes should be answered, but none at all 
why he should be abused. He held his opinions, 
as far as we can gather, with perfect sincerity, 
and had an extremely shrewd reason for his faith 
when anybody chose to demand it from him. 
When the late Sir William Molesworth, who 
greatly admired this philosopher, and had edited 
him, was contesting Southwark, the rabble, 
hounded on by the bigots (a very ugly combi- 
nation, as Christians ought always to remember), 
shouted " No 'Obbes ! " We shall not advise our 
readers to join in this cry, any more than we 
should counsel them to become professed disciples 
of the man. To us, he is simply an eminent 
English philosopher, who writes capita], clear, 
sinewy English ; and who, at all events, gives one 
side of human speculation with wonderful sharp- 
ness and force. Indeed, it is these original and 
daring kinds of speculators who keep philosophy 
alive; and they are worth reading even for the 
very sake of strengthening you (as may happen 
likely enough) in convictions opposite to theirs. 
Hobbes, as we remarked in our chapters on the 



282 A Course of English Literature. 

division into epochs, had great influence on the 
seventeenth century, especially visible after the 
Restoration. There is something about his 
T-i philosophy which suits what are called " men of 
the world," as distinct from that poetic and Pla- 
tonic philosophy which also had representatives 
then (see Dr. Whewell's Lecture on More), 
and which divides the world of speculation with 
Hobbism. It no doubt helped to foster that 
heterodoxy in all branches of thought which 
became so strong as the eighteenth century ad- 
vanced, and against which Berkeley so constantly 
fought. In later times Hobbes has been com- 
paratively neglected, and for the same reason as 
other men of different opinions ; because the views 
having made their impression, the man and his 
original exposition of them are put on one side. 
Besides this fact — which the world owes to those 
popular writers who come between it and the 
great thinkers, and interpret them agreeably for 
it — schools of philosophy have their rises and 
falls in fashion like schools of poetry and general 
literature. Now, it is the idealists, and then the 



Philosophy — concluded. 283 

materialists, that are in fashion in metaphysics ; 
now the school that believes in innate moral prin- 
ciples, and then that which considers them arbi- 
trary, and dependent on outward associations, 
takes its turn of ascendancy in morals. These 
fundamental controversies are found in all ages 
of the world in philosophy; men attach them- 
selves, as by instinct, to one side or the other; 
and though it is complained that certainty cannot 
be arrived at, the attempt to arrive at it consti- 
tutes the benefit of philosophy to the student. It 
is the most vigorous exercise of the mind, and 
taken in the highest field. 

The degree of influence which Hobbes had on 
Locke is a disputed point in the history of this 
subject. But Locke's is the next great name in 
the order of time, and it is one which holds a 
high place in literary history. We do not pro- 
nounce between schools, and we do not profess 
allegiance to Locke's metaphysics. But besides 
his rank as one of our acutest writers on meta- 
physics, Locke has a definite position among 
those who have brought philosophy to bear on 



284 A Course of English Literature, 

our practical politics, on the questions which en- 
gage statesmen and lie at the bottom of legisla- 
tion. Liberalism owes more to Locke than to 
any philosopher, and through the pens of men 
like Mackintosh has loudly acknowledged the 
debt. Indeed, Locke's views on toleration and 
government — for he was one of the earliest lite- 
rary Whigs, and first became famous during the 
reign of William III. — have done a great deal to 
keep his metaphysics alive, and to procure him 
readers and admirers. The son of a captain in 
the Parliamentary army — opposed at Oxford in 
its most Tory days — long resident in Holland, 
that old asylum of " Liberals " before the word 
was known — Locke is emphatically the Whig 
philosopher. He had the shrewd, practical, cri- 
tical, unimaginative genius favoured by the party ; 
and brought it to bear on metaphysics as on 
other subjects. Like other philosophers, he has 
had his fluctuations in popularity. In the last 
generation, when there was a re-action against 
the French materialist philosophy preceding the 
Revolution, Locke, who was looked on as one of 



Philosophy — concluded. 285 

the ancestors of that school, met with hard treat- 
ment. The reprints and criticisms of late years 
show that the world is coming round to him 
again — as it always does to men of first-rate 
capacity, whether it accepts their doctrines or not. 
Now, that Locke's work on the " Hnman Under- 
standing " shows faculty of this rank in its clear- 
ness, harcl-headedness, felicity of illustration, and 
such qualities, is unquestionable ; and therefore, 
though it may be more or less followed at dif- 
ferent times, it is always sure of a certain per- 
manent amount of esteem, which will rise, of 
course, at such times as the class of philosophy 
it belongs to happens to take its turn in the 
ascendant. 

Why, then, was Locke underrated, as his 
admirers complain, during the generation repre- 
sented in England by Coleridge? Because the 
" Essay " — his critics would say — has too much 
the effect of ignoring all but what man can take 
in through his senses, from objects without. It 
is an able criticism of the mental machinery, and 
its operations, sensations, ideas, formation of 



286 A Course of English Literature. 

abstract ideas, and so forth. And there is great 
merit in writing lucidly on such topics ; as also, 
in attempting to show, practically, how much 
mankind can understand on subjects so mys- 
terious and difficult, which last is the great merit 
claimed for Locke by his admirers. But is not 
the range of his metaphysics too narrow ? Does 
he go deep enough into the inner nature of man ? 
Have we no innate ideas, as the Platonists main- 
tained, who thought that " order, virtue, law, 
goodness, and wisdom are not creatures of the 
soul of man, but innate and originally existent 
therein, not as an accident in a substance, but as 
light to enlighten, and as a guide to govern?" 
(Berkeley's " Siris," sect. 335.) Here, the reader 
sees, we come to the points of controversy which 
lie at the very roots of the whole subject ; and 
the accusation against Locke is, that his philoso- 
phy fails to satisfy the deepest wants of our 
nature. Of course, it is answered to this, that no 
philosophy can; and hence those who do not 
take refuge in revelation, and subordinate phi- 
losophy to it altogether, often reject metaphysics 



Philosophy — concluded. 287 

proper, and apply themselves to the study of 
those external phenomena which we may learn 
something with certainty about. In either case, 
Locke's disciples among them may contend that 
he explains whatever is really explicable, and that 
all the rest is vanity and vexation of spirit. 
" No," say his opponents ; " he never goes below 
the surface in such speculations, really ; and the 
tendency of his philosophy is towards a material- 
ising of all our conceptions." Who is to decide 
on such a dispute? Not we. But upon the 
understanding of the pros and cons, in it, the 
value of the study depends. 

The publication of Locke's "Essay" — late in 
the seventeenth century — gave a great impulse to 
metaphysics — from the clearness with which he 
developed his principles, and applied them to 
many subjects, which turn up in every-day con- 
versation, such as the faculties of brutes, &c. 
He familiarised the public with the process by 
which ideas are derived from experience, and 
combined in the mind ; and popularised the sub- 
ject very much. For a generation and more, at 



288 A Course of English Literature. 

that time, there was a relish for intellectual 
speculation — which must strike everybody who 
only looks even into papers like the u Spectator," 
or works of light literature like " Martin Scrib- 
lerus." Lord Shaftesbury's speculations on 
" Virtue " (which he treated, after the style of 
some classical sects, as a beautiful principle to be 
pursued for its own sake, and as its own reward) 
were quite fashionable : and Mandeville, of the 
" Fable of the Bees," became notorious by hold- 
ing forth, with much humorous illustration, that 
there were no such things as good and evil, 
right or wrong — according to the received 
opinion — at all. Such notions, according to his 
school, were fictions of the magistrate to keep the 
mob in order ; and vice, by supporting trade, was 
a benefit to the public. In short, our great- 
great-grandfathers nearly had their principles 
turned upside down in the beginning of last cen- 
tury ; and grave persons amongst them foretold 
the ruin of the state from an intellectual profli- 
gacy, which they saw to be connected with the 
moral profligacy then prevailing. Prominent 



Philosophy — concluded. 289 

among these, was the renowned Bishop Berkeley 
— one of the finest heads and purest hearts that 
ever appeared in Europe. 

George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (born 
1684; died 1753), is probably less read than 
even Locke or Hobbes ; but his famous theory of 
" immaterialism " has something so odd in it to 
vulgar apprehensions, that it survives as a joke 
among those who would never accept it as a 
doctrine. 

" "When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 
And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said," 

sings Byron : his pleasantry helping to make the 
doctrine remembered. What is it, then, that the 
bishop meant — for he was too pious to trifle with 
truth, and too intelligent to assert nonsense ? 

He did not mean what many people assume, 
viz., that when we see what we call a material 
object there is nothing real there ; nor can he be 
answered by kicking a stone, as some have face- 
tiously done when his view has been broached. 
He denied the independent existence of matter as 
a solid something outside of all minds. He 



290 A Course of English Literature. 

denied there was any evidence of its existence, 
except as perceived by mind or spirit. How 
conld a material substance (snch as is commonly 
assumed) make itself known to us ? Things 
without can only be known to us as so many 
sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the 
sense, and it is impossible even to think of these 
as separate from perception. You can only know 
things by ideas, and ideas cannot exist in an 
unthinking substance — such as matter is thought 
to be. " The existence of an idea consists in 
being perceived." 

It is plain, even so far, that he never denied 
the reality of the sensations and ideas produced 
by things without. You kick a stone. But 
Berkeley does not deny the ideas of hardness, 
extension, &c, produced by that stone to be real. 
Not he. What he says is, that you cannot sepa- 
rate your perception of these, which is a spiritual 
feeling, from them ; and that out of mind you 
cannot even conceive the stone to exist. If it is 
not in your mind, it can only exist by being in 
some other — in that of another spirit, or of God. 



Ph ilosophy — concluded. 291 

And by enforcing and illustrating at length (in 
the cc Principles of Human Knowledge," and 
" Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous") 
these principles, Berkeley's object was to strike 
a deadly blow at materialism and atheism for 
ever; leaving nothing but ideas existing in the 
world, and only God as the producer of them. 
So far from the doctrine being an intellectual 
amusement of his, it was a very serious and 
sublime task that he had taken up as a duty. He 
thought the opposite opinion as strange as his 
own seems to a man who, unacquainted with 
metaphysics altogether, hears it for the first time. 
A wise man, therefore, will hesitate to laugh at 
Berkeley till he is sure he quite understands him : 
and, even then, his intentions ought to secure the 
saintly philosopher's memory from any such rude- 
ness. He was far from a dreamer, in life, the 
bishop. He wrote exquisitely well on common 
subjects, ranking, as a writer merely ', among our 
best men; and made active attempts at public 
improvement both abroad and at home. No 
writer of that age is better worth reading; and 

u 2 



292 A Course of English Literature. 

a student who cannot relish him may he pretty 
sure that philosophy is not his strong point. 
His disciples still deny that he has been an- 
swered ; and for a long time " answering Berke- 
ley " was almost a proverbial way of expressing 
a task of intellectual nicety. Burke was to have 
undertaken it, as we are informed by Boswell. 

The chief attack on the idealism of Berkeley, 
however, in the last century, came from the 
Scotch or Common Sense School headed by Reid, 
who was called into activity and antagonism by 
Hume. The " Treatise of Human Nature," 
published by Hume, in 1739, some thirty years 
after the promulgation of Berkeley's theory, 
carried the war against common notions of 
philosophy much farther. Berkeley had denied 
(in the sense above explained) the existence of 
matter. Hume, with quite different sympathies 
from Berkeley's, carried doubting so far as to 
leave scarce anything settled, and especially 
assailed the notion of " cause," maintaining that 
what is called causation was only order or 
sequence in things. At this stage came in Dr. 



Philosophy — concluded. 293 

Thomas Reid, of Glasgow, to set " Common 
Sense " (as lie professed) on its legs again, and 
reconcile philosophy and the vulgar to each 
other. This he essayed in "An Inquiry into the 
Human Mind on the Principles of Common 
Sense." 

Reid traces the progress of metaphysics from 
its modern founder, Descartes — through Locke, 
Berkeley, and Hume — to show that one had 
advanced upon the other (using his predecessor's 
principles, and adding to them, without similar 
designs) in an alarming way. Descartes had set 
out by proving his own existence, thus : " CogitOj 
ergo sum — I think, therefore I am." Locke had 
proved the continuance of this consciousness from 
remembrance : and the existence of a material 
world known to us through the impressions and 
ideas produced by it in the mind. Berkeley, 
taking up so much of Locke's system, had 
argued (as we have seen) that impressions and 
ideas being inconceivable, except as existing in 
spirit, there was nothing but spirit extant in the 
universe. " His arguments," says Reid ( a In- 



294 A. Course of English Literature. 

quiry," cap. 1, sect. 5), "are founded upon the 
principles which were formerly laid down by 
Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, and which 
have been very generally received. And the 
opinions of the ablest judges seem to be that they 
neither have been nor can be confuted." Hume, 
continues the philosopher, had upon the same 
grounds undone the world of spirit, and u left 
nothing in the world but ideas and impressions.'''' 

To meet this melancholy state of things, the 
Glasgow professor resolved on a radically new 
inquiry into our senses and their operations, in 
order to see whether it was true that we could not 
from our ideas and impressions infer the existence 
of anything else. He takes up, successively, in 
conducting this investigation, the senses of Smell- 
ing, Tasting, Hearing, Touch, and Seeing. " All 
that we know of the body," says Eeid, "is owing 
to anatomical dissection and observation, and it 
must be by an anatomy of the mind that we can 
discover its powers and principles." 

A brief summary of the chapter on Smelling 
will sufficiently illustrate Eeid's point of view. 



Philosophy — concluded. 295 

He begins by asking what we are conscious of, 
when (for example's sake) we smell a rose? 
First, the sensation which we call " smell" or 
" odour," and which has no similitude that we 
can perceive with the rose itself. Then comes 
the remembrance, or imagination of the smell of 
a rose, making three different ways in which a 
sensation may be presented to the mind. We 
can think of it without its presence, of course ; 
and philosophers (says Reid) tell us, that in that 
case, it is not the past sensation, but an " idea " 
of it — an "image" of it — which is present to 
our mind ; and that by comparing these ideas, 
with a view to their agreement or disagreement 
(the u grand principle of Locke's philosophy," he 
observes) we arrive in all cases at truth and 
knowledge. But here Reid puts in his negative. 
" No solid proof has ever been advanced," in his 
opinion, " of the existence of ideas. They are a 
mere fiction or hypothesis, contrived to solve the 
phenomena of the human understanding." 

" In the meantime," we again quote his words, 
" I beg leave to think, with the vulgar, that 



296 A Course of English Literature. 

when I remember the smell of the tube-rose, 
that very sensation which I had yesterday, and 
which has now no more any existence, is the 
immediate object of my memory; and when I 
imagine it present, the sensation itself, and not 
any idea of it, is the object of my imagination. 
. . . . Yet these acts or operations of the 
mind are as different and as easily distinguished 
as smell, taste, and sound. I am conscious of a 
difference in kind between sensation and memory, 
and between both and imagination. I find this 
also, that the sensation compels my belief of the 
present existence of the smell, and memory of 
my belief of its past existence. There is a smell, 
is the immediate testimony of sense; there was 
a smell, is the immediate testimony of memory. 
If you ask me why I believe that the smell exists ? 
I can give no other reason, nor shall ever be able to 
give any other, than that I smell it. If you ask, 
why I believe that it existed yesterday ? I can give 
no other reason but that I remember it." 

Reid looked on sensation and memory as 
distinct operations of the mind, and both of 



Philosophy — concluded. 29 7 

them as " original principles of belief." He 
further concluded that it was as much a part of 
our constitution to believe the existence of our 
sensations at one time, and their memory at 
another, as to believe that two and two are four. 
It was absurd, he thought, to reason either for or 
against their evidence, they being first principles, 
and falling under the province of common sense. 

This philosopher, in fact, argued against every 
part of the previous philosophy which ran counter 
to the ordinary instinctive beliefs of mankind. 
Thus, he held out against what was the esta- 
blished doctrine in his time, that secondary 
qualities — like colour, smell, &c. — existed not in 
the objects suggesting, but in the mind perceiv- 
ing them — a dogma older than the more startling 
one of Berkeley, and from which Berkeley had 
advanced to denying that primary qualities — 
extension, solidity, &c. — existed in the objects 
either. 

Both Hume and Eeid exercised great influence 
in philosophy. Hume's influence passed over into 
Germany and helped to form the Transcendental 



298 A Course of English Literature. 

System, which, in its turn, acting on Coleridge, 
contributed to the revival of Idealism, which he 
represented in the last generation. Reid's views, 
meanwhile, were operating not only in his native 
Scotland but elsewhere ; though from the general 
current of our literature, it does not seem to have 
been admitted that he had refuted Berkeley satis- 
factorily. His common sense system and Berke- 
ley's Idealism have each their disciples among 
metaphysical students at this moment, though 
metaphysics do not make so great a figure in the 
literary movement of the world as they did when 
Reid began to philosophise. 

Meanwhile the moral philosophy of the earlier 
part of the century was waning out of fashion. 
Gray testifies to it, in the case of Shaftesbury's 
writings, in one of his letters ; and there is no 
doubt that Mandeville was not many years in 
becoming what he is still — a curiosity of litera- 
ture known only to the few. The effect of Butler 
and Dr. Johnson on the reading classes, and of 
the labours of the Methodists on the lower, coun- 
teracted the mischievous tendencies which had 



Philosophy — concluded. 299 

frightened Berkeley (see his " Minute Philoso- 
pher" and his pamphlets), and staved off the 
consequences he had apprehended. It is curious 
that our heterodox and revolutionary writers, 
whether in religion or politics, seem to have done 
more execution among the French than among 
ourselves. They had a great deal to do with 
Voltaire, unquestionably. And when the French 
revolution brought all sorts of " philosophy " to 
bear on the most ignorant of the community, 
through the Tom Paines and Co., the evil was 
neutralised here by the soundness of the middle 
class, and the wholesome anti-GJ-allican feeling 
which Napoleon's career inspired. It is not, 
however, very creditable to the tone of English 
philosophy, that Paley's moral system should 
have been so prevalent (however admirable his 
style) during the days of George III., based as 
it is on mere selfishness, utilitarianism, and 
"reward and punishment." This, however, met 
its inevitable re-action, in time, during the 
memorable intellectual movement (often men- 
tioned in these pages) which commenced at the 



300 A Course of English Literature. 

close of the last century. Coleridge and Words- 
worth — perhaps more than any other two men — 
helped to breathe a new life into English specu- 
lation, the effect of which is everywhere visible 
in the church, in literature, and in society, 
Coleridge's services to philosophy are not easy 
to estimate in detail, scattered as they are 
through writings of very various kinds. But 
everywhere he is full, whether in his Table-Talk, 
Lectures, Essays, or what-not, of rich suggestions 
on the great subject ; and no one can commune 
with such a mind without being wiser for it. Of 
discipleskip, in his, as in the other cases, we shall 
say nothing. 

One word in conclusion. In this branch of our 
Course, perhaps more decidedly than in others, 
many readers will hesitate before the amount of 
labour which even our modest hints would seem 
to open before them. But it does not follow 
because a man doubts his powers to do much, 
that he ought to decide to do nothing. Let the 
reader take even one philosophical master-piece 
here alluded to, and read it with all the attention 



Philosophy — concluded. 301 

of which he is capable. The hooks are not un- 
common. Of leisure, everybody who reads this 
Course admits by that fact that he has some. 
And no man ever made the most of the humblest 
opportunities without deriving solid advantage 
from it. 









XV. 

CONTEMPORARY WRITERS. 

HE propriety of such a chapter as we 
now commence will be doubted by 
nobody who reflects how many people 
read, almost exclusively, the literature of the ge- 
neration to which they themselves belong. It is 
always so ; and is likely to be still more the case 
as the amount of the literature of each generation 
increases. When this last fact is allowed for, and 
our neglect of the works of undoubted greatness 
of past times estimated at its full significance, we 
confess that we wonder how almost any writer of 
our age can expect to he popular a century hence. 
The English then flourishing will have their own 
clever men talking to them according to their pet 



Contemporary Writers, 303 

fashions and ideas ; the by-gone mass of books 
will loom very large and alarming ; and they will 
probably content themselves (as most of us do) 
with reading about the writers who flourished in 
older periods instead of reading them at first 
hand. Thinkers whose sayings have been found 
verified by events — poets of real depth and finish 
— will stand the best chance. But, judging from 
experience, it will not be the men who at present 
make the most noise, and excite the most gossip, 
that posterity will care for at all. The fashion- 
able writers of an age do, sometimes, but it is 
very rare, become the standard favourites of the 
nation. In letters, as in all other departments, 
what is good and true originates in individuals 
here and there, is long embodied in a few, and 
only by degrees spreads amongst the mass. 

Before noticing our chief living writers accord- 
ing to the classes into which we have already 
divided their predecessors^ (a task which we shall 
try to perform fearlessly and impartially), it may 
be as well to say something of the character and 
tendencies of our present literature as a whole. 



. 304 -^ Course of English Literature. 

Every age — as we have seen — has its own literary 
colour; a something recognisable in common 
between all its men. It was so with the Eliza- 
bethan age ; so with that of Charles I. ; so with 
that of Queen Anne. But we must not expect to 
be able to see our own character so distinctly. 
Let a man look in the glass ever so regularly, he 
cannot know what his own face appears to the 
world. His notion is only an approximation. 

Well, in the first place, the amount of produc- 
tiveness — the general literary activity — of our 
period is very creditable to it ; a certain degree of 
ability is more abundant (just as population and 
manufactures are so) than in earlier times. The 
machinery of literature is completer, and just as 
it is easier to learn than it was of old — because of 
the apparatus existing to help — so it is easier to 
write. A man of less solid brains and attain- 
ments than a man of 1766, may not only know 
more but may write better than he did ; or than 
it would have been in his own power to write had 
he flourished in that year. This is what time 
and accumulation do for a people in literature 



Contemporary Writers. 305 

and elsewhere. But the final rank of a genera- 
tion cannot be determined, except by the number 
of great original geniuses it produces rising high 
above circumstances, and doing wonders in pro- 
portion to their advantages. This is hardly the 
characteristic of the British world of letters just 
now. It is no disparagement to anybody doing 
his best, to say that he does not produce a 
" Paradise Lost," a " Faery Queen," a " Decline 
and Fall," or a " Wealth of Nations." But, it 
will be by such monuments of this kind as we 
leave, that our descendants will judge us : and 
since it would be absurd to pretend that any such 
are rising amongst us (any more than new 
Pyramids in the sands of Egypt), we should 
be moderate in our boasts, and very careful 
to study the master-pieces of our ancestors be-, 
fore giving up our whole care to people round 
about. 

Again, it is worth observing that the spirit of 
our present literature is historical and critical 
rather than original and inventive. It is not so 
poetical as that of the last generation ; for though 



306 A Course of English Literature. 

we have some exquisite poetry, we have not so 
much of it, nor does the world feel so vivid an 
interest in it as it did fifty years ago. In philo- 
sophy we have critical compilations rather than 
single and solitary edifices of thought. History 
is perhaps our strong point; but our histories, 
even, are rather long review-articles than works 
of art. As for fiction, we are rich enough if 
quantity be considered — but no better off, if 
quality be taken into account, than the half- cen- 
tury which gave birth to " Tom Jones," " Tris- 
tram Shandy," and the " Vicar of Wakefield." 
Are we sure we could match these, with three 
novels written since Sir Walter Scott's death? 
Take light literature, too. Fashion is more 
visibly influential here than anywhere, and we 
are apt to be more indifferent to the amusements 
than to other features of the life of former times. 
But an impartial reader of the works of dead 
wags will find as much salt in the younger Colman 
or Peter Pindar, or scores whom we could name, 
as in anything that is published and laughed at 
among ourselves. Why should we expect our 



Contemporary Writers. 307 

fun to be more lasting than theirs ? Why should 
we suppose that it is better ? 

Then, it is worthy of reflection, that some 
branches of literature have decayed away, mys- 
teriously, altogether. Where is our Poetic Drama ? 
Vanished like a beautiful dream. Where is our 
pithy didactic verse-satire ? Buried in the graves 
of Churchill, Cowper, Pope. Where is the old 
English " Essay ? " It has degenerated into 
articles embodying comic utilitarianism — a com- 
promise between useful knowledge and light read- 
ing — blue-book plus buffoonery. Or it is repre- 
sented by Cockney and semi-French smartness — • 
so different from the grace, the politeness, the 
literature, of the old " Tatler," and " Spectator:" 
or by mere twaddle, made up of stale platitude, 
and small pleasantry. The wits of last century 
were nearly all scholars : the elder Colman trans- 
lated " Terence," and Fielding was perfectly well 
acquainted with Aristotle. 

While, however, we think it our duty to call 
the reader's attention to this side of affairs (of 
which he probably never hears much), and to 

x 2 



308 A Course of English Literature. 

urge him not to neglect " the mighty men of old, 
the men of renown," we are also prepared to do 
full justice to the living genius of what is at all 
events a very active time. Probably, too, there 
are many writers well worth reading, and with 
audiences of their own, whose works an ingenuous 
student has scarce ever opened. Our journals are 
unfair to these men. The fashionable novelist 
and poet, the popular article-writer, are trotted 
through columns of criticism and gossip, by the 
unread critic and gossip of the day, as if they re- 
presented the English mind, almost solely, at this 
epoch. Nothing more debauches the taste of 
youth. A man might as well live on gooseberries 
as on light literature, however good both may be 
in proper times and seasons. One is almost 
ashamed to write it ; but how often do we hear 
in what is called " popular literature," of Mill, 
Whately, or Isaac Taylor — Grrote or Thirlwall — 
Donaldson or Kamsay — Froude or Francis New- 
man, or many more, variously representing the 
thought and attainments of the age? Carlyle, 
indeed, is more fortunate, because he happens to 



Contemporary Writers. 309 

be a great humourist as well as a great thinker. 
But generally, if a man is not a novelist, or does 
not enjoy some good advertisement (a baronetcy 
or M. P. -ship, for example,) as an aid to bis 
books, nine-tenths of those who fancy they care 
for "reading" are as likely as not to remain 
ignorant of all he has done. Warning our readers, 
then, never to regulate the attention which they 
bestow on different authors by the accidents of 
their success, we proceed to the classification pro- 
mised above, but with a painful consciousness 
that our space is very limited. 

History. — Of some historians of the age it has 
come in our way to speak in earlier chapters, espe- 
cially of Sir Francis Palgrave, as a great investi- 
gator, and (in a less degree) a reproducer of the 
institutions, events, and life of the Middle Ages. 
The characteristic of present History is its re-pro- 
ductive aim ; its anxiety to embody all the by-gone 
ages with which it is occupied, and in pictures. 
The general soundness of the aim cannot be 
doubted, but it wants so many qualities in the 
writer, that we must be prepared to find per- 



310 A Course of English Literature. 

petual failures — narrative that is not pictorial, or 
pictures that are not like, 

Mr. Carlyle, by dint of his most effective 
works — " Past and Present," " Cromwell," and 
the " French Ke volution " — comes most naturally 
into the historical class. Whole pages might be 
bestowed on his literary character ; but we must 
be brief. Carlylism is not a system so much as it 
is an influence. His writings may be great 
favourites with men of very different leanings in 
matters of opinion. He is thought an innovator ; 
but he only preaches, in the newest garb and 
with the newest knowledge, the oldest moral 
truths, and some of the oldest though least- 
remembered political ones. The duty of truth — 
of sincerity — the divine origin and destiny of the 
world and of man — this is the fundamental doc- 
trine which (without seeking help from estab- 
lished dogmas) Carlyle enforces on the age. The 
necessity of government — the superiority of great 
men — these are the bases of his political teaching. 
But he holds no party views with regard to the 
politics of the day, for he sees that much change 



Contemporary Writers. 311 

is still necessary and inevitable, though never ad- 
vocating* it for its own sake, and even regretting 
the spectacle itself. Democracy, however, Car- 
lyle in no way accepts as final, believing it con- 
trary to that order and subordination established 
in the world by the eternal laws of God. 

Carlyle has, in his historical works, given us 
pictures both of the kind of order which he ap- 
proves, and of the kind of changes he approves. 
In " Past and Present " he carries us back to the 
old rude mediasval intense times, when duty was 
based on faith, and when faith in Catholic Chris- 
tianity filled the world with a narrow but genuine 
conception of divine law. It is, however, equally 
part of his historical belief that institutions grow 
corrupt, and then the very qualities which made a 
noble-minded man loyal to the system of the 
older age make him rebel against the new and 
later one. Cromwell is thus a Carlylian hero as 
much as Abbot Samson. And so, when he comes 
to the French Eevolution, his sympathies are 
with the Eevolution ; but they are with it in a 
very different spirit from that with which they 



312 A Course of English Literature. 

were felt towards Cromwell ! "We are now among 
meaner men in an unhappier age — among poor 
meagre philosophers, and spasmodic destroyers, 
with little noble about them, except that instinc- 
tive passion for something higher to come in the 
world, which makes the poetry and religion of 
their revolt. Accordingly, the sadness — the 
gleams of irony and scornful humour, which Car- 
lyle's genius flings over the story of the French 
Revolution, indicate a very different feeling from 
that he shows towards the brave, manly, God- 
fearing Puritans. The power in all his historical 
books is of the same character : there is the rarest 
creative insight in dealing with persons to be 
painted, combined with wonderful bits of scenery, 
and streaked all across with poetry — now bois- 
terous, now quiet and tender ; and with humour 
— rich, odd, genial, and sometimes grotesque and 
exaggerated. The mere force of Carlyle as a 
writer — leaving aside the difference of opinion 
and taste excited by his views or style — is per- 
fectly unrivalled in our generation. A man must 
be simply stupid not to feel his power : and his 



Contemporary Writers. 313 

influence is seen in many men who are influential 
themselves. Is it necessary, then, to advise our 
readers to read his books, with the simple proviso 
that it would he madness in them to imitate his 
manner ? 

Coming now to Lord Macaulay, and disclaim- 
ing, in his case also, any attempt to say all that 
should be said within our limits, it is superfluous 
to ask anybody to read so well-known and pro- 
minent a writer. Everybody reads him who reads 
anything. This, however, is only one reason the 
more why he should be candidly spoken of, and 
his weak points ought to be frankly handled in 
compliment to his very reputation. His mere 
talents speak for themselves. He is a vigorous, 
acute, dexterous, picturesque writer, whom every- 
body can enjoy and understand. But was he a 
great man ? This is doubtful. In great things, 
he is always second-rate at the best ; for nobody 
can say that he is of high mark as a poet, either 
in verse or prose. He is not a discoverer, or a 
reformer, though very clever in discussing dis- 
coveries and reforms. He has no tenderness, 



314 -4 Course of English Literature. 

very little geniality ; no fire but of the firework 
sort, which nobody can warm heart or hand at : 
in fact, none of the sweeter, more alluring quali- 
ties which inspire enthusiasm and awaken loyalty. 
The finer sort of genius he certainly has not; 
and, admitted to be a genius at all, he cannot 
take a lofty or a noble place. His faculty is 
transcendant cleverness — faculty, not merely below 
the Shakspeare stamp, but below the stamp of 
Burke or Johnson. Unfortunately, this is not 
the worst that has to be said of Lord Macaulay. 
He wants generoshy, and his sympathies are as 
narrow as is his range of style. There is not a 
single essay of his, not a single chapter of his 
History, perfectly trustworthy, if he has the least 
motive for shutting his eyes to a fact that he does 
not like, or his heart to an emotion which it is 
not large enough to share. We therefore go to 
his books, as we go to any place of amusement 
equally well worth the money, but with no hopes 
of being made wiser or better, no feeling that we 
are to commune with a lofty or ardent soul. This 
stoniness of nature is the fatal element in Mac- 



Contemporary Writers. 315 

aulay, and will prevent his living as a great and 
dear memory in letters. Besides, men live by 
the moral qualities in their books, not by the 
cleverness in them only. People don't buy stink- 
ing fish, for the sake of their shining. 

Mr. Froude's qualities as a historian will be 
better appreciated by and by. Of his views re- 
garding our great men in the sixteenth century, 
this is not the place to speak; but every view 
ought to be heard in its turn, and we may be 
thankful to any one who awakens an interest in 
those early times, which are neglected, now-a- 
days, for stories about Charles II. 's poodles, and 
G-eorge IIL's squabbles with Whig oligarchs. 
There is a vein of sentiment and poetry through 
Mr. Froude's powerful but not coarse style, 
which has no parallel in the writings of those 
who appeal to the meaner taste for epigrams and 
antithesis. If he errs, he errs from thinking too 
well of the men of past days, not from wishing to 
depreciate them for the amusement of what may 
be called the well-dressed vulgar. 

Mr. Grote has done something quite new in 



316 A Course of English Literature. 

his " Greece." He has enabled Jack or Tom to 
feel like an Athenian, to take a direct human and 
historical interest in the struggles of — 

" The lofty old town, 
Of immortal renown, 
"With the noble Ionian violet crown." 

Let Jack or Tom try, and he will begin to feel 
that Socrates was a man and not an abstraction. 
Perhaps he will feel, too, as if he would have 
voted for hemlocking him as a disagreeably acute 
critic of the populace. But Mr. Grote does not 
wish that, we are sure, only he has an extraordi- 
nary partiality for the Demos, which is, however, 
one thing that produces the liveliness of the book. 
Mr. Grote is not poetic, not often eloquent, but 
always shrewd, lively, and in earnest. With 
Grote' s " History," and a copy or two of Lang- 
horne's or Long's " Plutarch," our Athenseums, 
Institutions, &c, would really put aspiring youth 
in the way of understanding the classic life. As 
it is, we fear, the novels have it all to themselves, 
which is a pity, even for the novelists, who are 
so much better appreciated by well-informed 



Contemporary Writers. 317 

people, who only come to them for relaxa- 
tion. 

From history (all that we need say of recent 
biographies, having been said earlier in the Course) 
we come to — 

Poetry. — The two great and established poets 
of our generation are Tennyson and Browning. 
They need not be quoted here ; they need not be 
praised. Enough, if we point out their relations 
to the age, and to each other. 

Tennyson's poetry is exquisite. Stale praise, 
you will say; but we mean that his poems are 
literally exquisita — "carefully wrought out," 
" ripely considered," " choice " — as the Latin 
dictionaries have it. And this finish of his has 
its significance. He came just after a poetic age 
— that of Wordsworth and Coleridge — and it was 
natural that he should refine on them. He is all 
poetry — subtle, delicate, musical. The common 
poetic gifts he possesses in full — but he exercises 
them in a peculiar way — perhaps a little over- 
charging the beautiful things which he paints 
from without, with a subjective pensiveness, born 



3 1 8 A Course of English Literature. 

(as it would seem to a stranger) of solitude and 
melancholy. Tennyson is a touchstone of taste 
in poetry. He who does not feel his poetry — 
feels none; though he may admire, sincerely, a 
great deal in some real poets — which "yet is not 
of the essence of their gifts. It would be an 
endless task to unfold this, fully; but let our 
student on his next holiday carry this volume 
with him to the country, and think it over among 
the trees. 

Tennyson is not destitute of humour, but he is 
not conspicuously endowed with it, and (as is 
generally the case with such men) wants the 
dramatic range of sympathy, of some poets. In 
these qualities, Browning is his superior, though 
too peculiar to be equally popular. Tennyson is 
finer and Browning richer of the two — using both 
words in their purest and chastest sense. Ten- 
nyson colours the external world with his senti- 
ment, Browning with his character. The " Palace 
of Art," is like a dream. "Pippa Passes," is 
like a masquerade. Tennyson shows you things, 
through his own mind. Browning passes into 



Contemporary Writers. 319 

them, and frolics before you in their garb. Hence, 
the one poet's best poems are lyrical, or at least 
of the nature of monologues. The others are 
mostly of a dramatic kind. 

These two poets are by all means to be read. 
But we are far from asserting that they are the 
only poets worth reading. Younger men are 
coming up, and a sensible reader does not wait 
till all the world tells him whom he ought to 
admire. Patmore, Allingham, Alexander Smith, 
Owen Meredith, Swinburne, each has his charm 
for lovers of song, though it is not in our power 
to do justice to them now. We advance to 

Fiction. — There is as much talent employed in 
this branch as in any, now-a-days, and for an 
excellent politico-economical reason — there is a 
good market, a fair demand, for the stuff. The 
reading public wants to be amused, and is. 

Fiction is at once among the highest and the 
lowest of literary productions. Novels have been 
written by some of the greatest — they have also 
been written by some of the smallest — of literary 
mankind. Disclaiming any attempt to notice 



320 A Course of English Literature. 

every novelist worth reading, let us say a few 
words on some of those most worth it, whom we 
take to be — Bulwer Lytton, Dickens, Disraeli, 
Lever, and Thackeray. Among the older men, 
these have been the most influential as thinkers, 
and pcpular as story-tellers, of the novelists of 
our time. These two characteristics (united in 
all great writers of fiction) are not necessarily 
possessed by the same person, and that is a 
feature of the class well worth noticing. 

Bulwer's strong point as novelist proper is his 
fable, his well-turned stories, the ingenuity with 
which different qualities needful to a novel are 
woven together into a dramatic whole. His 
characters are generally clearly conceived; not 
strikingly real, so as to stick in your memory 
like some people's, but harmoniously built, and 
obedient to the laws of their being in all cases. 
His style is various — now lively, now eloquent — 
best (so we at least think) when the writer is in 
his simpler and quieter moods; but always im- 
pressive, especially to the young. He has kept 
up the romantic feeling in the youth of the 



Contemporary Writers. 321 

country — that is his philosophical work and in- 
fluence — and he has also helped to keep alive a 
taste for letters and the intellectual refinements 
of life. 

Dickens has surpassed every contemporary in 
popularity — always an interesting thing about a 
man, and illustrative of his period. He typifies 
and represents, in our literary history, the middle 
class ascendancy prepared for by the Eeform 
Bill; since Sir "Walter Scott, with all his fame 
and his audience, represented mainly the tastes 
and ideas of the upper class and of the old world. 
This, which is Dickens's strength, is also his 
weakness ; for his faults, such as they are, are 
the faults belonging to a too zealous and narrow 
worship of modern social ideas, and a too great 
neglect of established, classical, and ancient lite- 
rature. 

Dickens's forte is not his literal fidelity to life, 
as clumsy observers fancy, but the vividness of 
his imagination and sentiment. He is more true 
to general than to individual human nature : for 
while the power of the heart is felt all through his 



322 A Course of English Literature. 

pages, many of his portraits are exaggerations 
and caricatures. Indeed, he depicts what used to 
be called " humours " rather than persons, for the 
most part. If we turn over in our memories the 
figures in his fictions that most strike us, we 
shall find them more or less odd and irregular 
specimens of humanity. Each of them is an in- 
dividual, and not (what Johnson observed of. 
Shakspeare's characters) a species. The Wellers, 
Skimpoles, Cuttles, Dombeys, Pecksniffs are not 
unnatural at heart, but neither are they " repre- 
sentative men," such as occur in a few of the 
leading fictions of the world. Fielding's land- 
lords and landladies might be found in the aver- 
age inns of his time; a similar character in 
Dickens would be dressed in his livery and inse- 
parable from the locality where he placed him, 
and yet human enough to be interesting too. 

This fact marks the peculiar section of novelists 
to which Dickens belongs — the school of Sterne 
and Goldsmith, rather than the school of Fielding 
and Smollett. And hence, if he is read by a dis- 
tant posterity, it will be for his own sake, rather 



Contemporary Writers. 323 

than from their curiosity to know exactly what 
kind of men their ancestors were. 

Imagination, then, is Dickens's real master- 
faculty. His descriptions, characters, humour, 
and pathos are equally marked with it ; and it is 
always in the ascendant in his books. To be 
employed with most effect, however, Dickens's 
imagination requires to be employed on the real 
and material world, and to have a variety of stuff 
to work upon. He could not make an Ariel out 
of the mere air, though he could put wings on a 
very homely (in the eyes of other men) ballet- 
fairy, and raise it into the regions of imagination. 

His style betrays the imaginative man as much 
by its waywardness as its power. It is a good 
style for him ; but, abstractedly, it is not a good 
style, as Goldsmith's, for instance, is. It is too 
peculiar and prononce. Hence so many inferior 
men imitate it tolerably (which in the case of a 
purer, clearer style, they could not do), and this 
is unlucky for Dickens. The mob — never critical 
— does not see that it is the singularity, and not 
the force, of the man which makes a respectable 

y 2 



324 A Course of English Literature. 

imitation possible, and is disposed to underrate 
the original accordingly. A zebra is an uncom- 
mon animal, but something moderately like it 
may be produced by painting a donkey. 

Disraeli is one of those who have availed 
themselves of novels as instruments for bringing 
their intellects to bear most readily on the public. 
This is an important use of novels in our time, 
something analogous to the use of balloons (now, 
it is said, about to be common) for purposes of 
science or war. In a certain degree, the case of 
Disraeli was also that of Bulwer, but Bulwer has 
much the advantage of Disraeli as a story-teller 
and artist. Nevertheless, there is enough of the 
novelist proper in the latter to place him in the 
front rank in our day, and to enable all the qualities 
of his genius to tell in the romance form. His 
style is capital, " at once smart and stately," as 
a critic has justly remarked — clear as silver, and 
sharp as steel. His characters are a little vague, 
when romantic; but perfectly real, and well- 
defined, when drawn from society directly. Of 
poetic sentiment he has enough to colour his vein 



Contemporary Writers. 325 

of fine wit, and though caviare to the multitude, 
the combination is very attractive to connois- 
seurs, and to all who love the more brilliant 
aspects of highly-cultivated life. Like Bulwer, 
Disraeli has helped to keep alive the romantic 
feeling in our youth, and it is his special merit to 
have also disposed them to see and feel the senti* 
merit of which political life is still to be made 
participant. 

Lever has been very widely read for many 
years, as much so as any man — except Dickens, 
perhaps ; and though his influence cannot be 
rated so high as that of some men, common 
gratitude induces us to place him here. Irish 
life, military life, and continental life, have been 
the three great fields of his lively genius and 
cheerful spirit. He has the wit and the insight 
into character found in the best light literature 
men — the Chesterfields and Walpoles, for exam- 
ple — and these rather than the pure artist's 
qualities are peculiarly his. The portraits in 
Lever are, however, excellent, though the range 
from which they are chosen is not very wide, and 



326 A Course of English Literature. 

though his sitters are not very deep or signifi- 
cant as characters. It is the man-of-the-world's 
talent emphatically that he has, yet not without 
something finer and more poetic appearing in his 
descriptions, whether of field or flood. 

He is, too, from the peculiar class of life in 
which he has gathered his materials, one of the 
most strictly entertaining writers of the age. 
There is not a headache in a hogshead of his 
sound and sparkling literary champagne, either, 
for he always remembers in his fun that he 
writes to families and to gentlemen. 

The late Mr. Thackeray — to whom the alphabeti- 
cal order now brings us — gained his place later in 
life and later in time than any of the novelists here 
discussed. This was well for him ; for the shade 
ripens, while the sun often spoils. His place is 
clearly ascertained, and admits of no question, 
however; so, we must mark his characteristics 
with the brevity and rapidity which alone our 
limits have permitted us in the case of others. 

Thackeray was the great realist of our time in 
fiction — and the completest one. He draws from 



Contemporary Writers. 327 

common life — not low life — but the ordinary life 
of the country, and shows us the philosophy of it 
all in his pictures. There is little romance in his 
characters or incidents. Everyday persons are 
doing everyday things, for the most part, and 
there is no attempt to wander beyond that circle. 
He is the novelist of civilisation, and of the 
world, par excellence; not the whole world, but 
the representative part — the part that exhibits, 
when developed by education, the character and 
qualities of the entire people. It is a great mis- 
take to suppose that this is a narrow circle to 
work in : for it exhibits an infinite variety of 
character and condition, and it comprises all the 
governing and leading part of England — the 
part of every country by which posterity mainly 
judges of each generation. 

His style is admirably adapted to his task, 
being manly, colloquial, elegant and even ; 
smacking of scholarship without pedantry, and 
rising into passion — when needful — without 
spasm or eccentricity. It is a well-bred style, a 
quality easier to ridicule than to imitate. 



328 A Course of English Literature. 

His characters are life-like — not from the mere 
presence of life in them (that may be communi- 
cated to puppets for scenic purposes) — but by 
dint of roundness and . completeness of finish. 
Dobbin is not common-place, and yet he is like 
common-place officers in the homeliness of his 
reality. And observe how difficult it is to excite 
this species of interest. Given a born oddity, a 
natural, it is comparatively easy to raise excite- 
ment about him ; but it is a rarer faculty to walk 
into a club and pull out a gentleman exceedingly 
like his neighbours in talk and look, and to make 
all England feel an interest in him. This is 
Thackeray's art; and in this he is unrivalled. 
His characters are from classes well known in 
the world ; they don't talk wit or eloquence ; the 
style of narrative about them is simply colloquial 
and gentleman-like ; and yet we all feel as if we 
had known them. This is a deeper kind of art 
than the more showy kind which tickles the 
vulgar, and indicates a solidity and penetration 
of intellect worth all the " Monte Christo " kind 
of faculty for romance put together. Nor does 



Contemporary Writers. 329 

it indicate any want of tenderer qualities. 
Thackeray has less sentiment but not less feeling 
than more lachrymose writers. In fact, too 
much sentiment is rather a sign of weakness 
than of depth of emotion ; as some men cry, not 
because their hearts are better, but because their 
eyes are worse, than those of their neighbours. 
When our literary criticism is more philosophical 
— that is, when our critics read and think a little 
more than now — these distinctions will be better 
understood. But apropos of that remark, a few 
words must be said on our present 

PhilosopJiy. — Metaphysics are out of fashion 
now, comparatively, except in Scotland, where a 
great man — the late Sir William Hamilton — 
kept alive an interest in the study, and where it 
was lately represented by the eminent Ferrier. 
Philosophy is merely practical for the most part 
now in England, deals with the facts of physical 
science — with logic — with the laws of trade — 
with social problems, and questions of political 
interest. 

The great name in English philosophy, now, 



330 A Course of English Literature. 

(albeit borne by one of Scottish descent) is that 
of Mill. His treatise on " Liberty," for in- 
stance, will be found by the reader still ignorant 
of him an excellent specimen of his grave and 
beautiful style, so full, of dignity and calmness. 
In his " Political Economy," though that depart- 
ment belongs to science rather than to literature, 
there are several chapters perfectly appreciable 
by those who have not learned the technicalities 
of the science, while very much calculated to lead 
them to its study. Mill's influence and that of 
the Comtists — as represented by Mr. Lewes and 
Miss Martineau — will do much to popularise that 
great study of the future — the philosophy of 
history and society. The success of Mr. Buckle's 
" Civilisation," indicates the growing taste for 
such inquiries ; and all who would be on a level 
with the stream of thought of the age, will be 
doing well to prepare for comprehending them. 
But to attach one's-self to the school here 
pointed out — without attending to other teachers 
— would be weak indeed. A study of the great 
men of past ages is necessary to prevent our 



Contemporary Writers. 331 

being blown about by every wind of doctrine in 
our own. Much that looks bran-new, is very old 
in speculation, and the reader must not think 
every man a discoverer, because he has not heard 
of his doctrines before. Common-place cautions ! 
Yes. But practical and useful. We shall close 
our Course with them ; and trust to the reader's 
intelligence and courtesy to fill up many a hint 
that we have not been able to develop through- 
out. 



THE END. 



BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WH1TEKRIARS. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Jan. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 






